The Bell Jar , published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, received mixed reviews when it was published on 14 January 1963. Within a month after Plath's death, Ted Hughes gave Heinemann permission to publicly release Plath's name as the author. That did not stop Heinemann from releasing a book club edition of Victoria Lucas's The Bell Jar under the Contemporary Fiction imprint in 1964. Strangely, though, on the back of that dust wrapper it reads, "Victoria Lucas is a pseudonym, and we are not in a position to disclose any details of the author's identity." Do you know what's on the inside flap of the dust wrapper of the first, Heinemann edition (pictured left)? "Esther Greenwood's story began before her visit to New York, but it was during those strangely unreal weeks - when with eleven other winners of a fashion magazine contest, she was offered the riches of the city as a gift - that her growing feeling of unease an inadequacy began to op...

The following is a guest blog post by Annette Stevens, who recently interviewed me (!) for her blog, Mademoiselle . You'll remember that two previous interviews, of Elizabeth Winder and Andrew Wilson also appeared on both her blog ( Elizabeth , Andrew ) and mine ( Elizabeth , Andrew ). Tune in next week for a fourth interview with Karen V. Kukil, editor of The Journals of Sylvia Plath (aka The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath ) and a forthcoming edition of Sylvia Plath's letters. Peter K. Steinberg is a Sylvia Plath scholar, who runs two online resources, and is currently co-writing a Plath letters collection with Karen Kukil. Here, you can read what he has to say about Sylvia Plath: Hello Peter, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Hello Annette, it’s my pleasure! Thank you for asking me to participate. What initially sparked your interest in the work of Sylvia Plath? It started as a junior in college last century . I was in an introduction to poetry course...