The Bell Jar - letters.to.stephanie

1 The bell Jar by Sylvia Plath Biographical Note by Lois Ames / Drawings by Sylvia Plath eVersion / Notes at EOF Back Cover: SIX MONTHS IN A YOUNG WOMAN'S LIFE. "The bell Jar is a novel about the events of Sylvia Plath's twentieth year; about how she tried to die, and how they stuck her together with glue. It is a fine novel, as bitter and remorseless as her last poems -- the kind of book Salinger's Franny might have written about herself ten years later, if she had spent those ten years in Hell." -- Robert Scholes, The New York Times Book Review "A special poignance.

2 A special force, a humbling power, because it shows the vulnerability of people of hope and good will." -- Newsweek "By turns funny, harrowing, crude, ardent and artless. Its most notable quality is an astonishing immediacy, like a series of snapshots taken at high noon. The story, scarcely disguised autobiography, covers six months in a young girl's life, beginning when she goes to New York to serve on a fashion magazine's college-editorial board. It ends when she emerges from a mental hospital after a breakdown." -- Martha Duffy, Time "Sylvia Plath's only novel is a deceptively modest, uncommonly fine piece of work.

3 A sharp and memorable poignancy. With her classical restraint and purity of form, Sylvia Plath is always refusing to break your heart, though in the end, she breaks it anyway." -- Lucy Rosenthal, Saturday Review "On February 11, 1963, a 30-year-old American poet, separated from her husband and living with her children in a cold London flat, gassed herself and passed into myth. Eight months later ten of her last poems, written at a speed of two or three a day, 'written,' she said, 'at about four in the morning.. that still blue, almost eternal hour before the baby's cry, before the glassy music of the milkman, settling his bottles,' appeared on two pages of Encounter magazine and caused a sensation.

4 In 1965 her husband brought out a posthumous collection, Ariel.. In the eight years since her death Sylvia Plath has become a major figure in contemporary literature." -- Richard Locke, The New York Times Book Review This low-priced Bantam Book has been completely reset in a type face designed for easy reading, and was printed from new plates. It contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition. NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED. THE bell JAR A Bantam Book Published by arrangement with Harper & Row, Publishers PRINTING HISTORY Harper & Row edition published February 1971 2nd printing.

5 April 1971 5th printing..May 1971 3rd printing..April 1971 6th printing..July 1971 4th printing..May 1971 7th printing..August 1971 8th printing..September 1971 McCall Magazine excerpt published April 1971 Literary Guild of America edition published May 1971 COSMOPOLITAN Magazine excerpt published September 1971 Bantam edition published April 1972 This book was originally published in Great Britain and is fully protected by copyright under the terms of the International Copyright Union. The quotations on pages 12, 13 are from "Sunflower," by Mack David, copyright 1948 by Famous Music Corporation.

6 The lines on page 77 are from "Wunderbar," by Cole Porter, copyright 1951 by Cole Porter; copyright 1967 by John F. Wharton, Trustee, T. B. Harms Co., Selling Agent. Sylvia Plath's poem "Mad Girl's Lovesong" first appeared in the August 1953 issue of MADEMOISELLE. All rights reserved. Copyright 1971 by Harper & Row, Publishers. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information address: Harper A. Row, Publishers, 49 East 33rd Street, New York, 10016. Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc.

7 , a National General company. Its trade-mark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in other countries. Marco Regtstrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, 10019. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA For ELIZABETH and DAVID One It was a QUEER, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers -- goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway.

8 It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves. I thought it must be the worst thing in the world. New York was bad enough. By nine in the morning the fake, country-wet freshness that somehow seeped in overnight evaporated like the tail end of a sweet dream. Mirage-gray at the bottom of their granite canyons, the hot streets wavered in the sun, the car tops sizzled and glittered, and the dry, cindery dust blew into my eyes and down my throat. I kept hearing about the Rosenbergs over the radio and at the office till I couldn't get them out of my mind.

9 It was like the first time I saw a cadaver. For weeks afterward, the cadaver's head -- or what there was left of it -- floated up behind my eggs and bacon at breakfast and behind the face of Buddy Willard, who was responsible for my seeing it in the first place, and pretty soon I felt as though I were carrying that cadaver's head around with me on a string, like some black, noseless balloon stinking of vinegar. I knew something was wrong with me that summer, because all I could think about was the Rosenbergs and how stupid I'd been to buy all those uncomfortable, expensive clothes, hanging limp as fish in my closet, and how all the little successes I'd totted up so happily at college fizzled to nothing outside the slick marble and plate-glass fronts along Madison Avenue.

10 I was supposed to be having the time of my life. I was supposed to be the envy of thousands of other college girls just like me all over America who wanted nothing more than to be tripping about in those same size-seven patent leather shoes I'd bought in Bloomingdale's one lunch hour with a black patent leather belt and black patent leather pocketbook to match. And when my picture came out in the magazine the twelve of us were working on -- drinking martinis in a skimpy, imitation silver-lam bodice stuck on to a big, fat cloud of white tulle, on some Starlight Roof, in the company of several anonymous young men with all-American bone structures hired or loaned for the occasion -- everybody would think I must be having a real whirl.