The Bell Jar

One of The Atlantic ’s Great American Novels

“A coming – of – age masterpiece.” — Boston Globe

"It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath's voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal." —USA Today

Sylvia Plath’s masterwork—an acclaimed and enduring novel about a young woman falling into the grip of mental illness and societal pressures

Esther Greenwood is a bright, beautiful, enormously talented young woman, but she's slowly going under—maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that her neurosis becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.

Sylvia Plath was born in 1932 in Massachusetts. Her books include the poetry collections The Colossus, Crossing the Water, Winter Trees, Ariel, and Collected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize. A complete and uncut facsimile edition of Ariel was published in 2004 with her original selection and arrangement of poems. She was married to the poet Ted Hughes, with whom she had a daughter, Frieda, and a son, Nicholas. She died in London in 1963.