Sylvia Plath: Did you know...

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 oppose her. Life for Esther had been a history of success: at school, at college, even with Buddy Willard, that superb, all-American symbol of success; but the value of these achievements seemed now to retreat from her, leaving her to focus on those vast territories where she would never tread with confidence of anything but failure. Back from New York, cramped by her mother's sympathetic watchfulness, Esther felt herself withdrawing into a private world, and in chapters of wonderful lucidity and vividness the author describes that borderland between sanity and insanity, whose only promise of escape is violence and death.

"This is a remarkable first novel by a young American woman - remarkable both for being a novel which uses detail and imagery to evoke a concrete, recognisable world and never to obscure it, and because it treats the subject of break-down with unusual directness and understanding."

The front and rear flaps of The Bell Jar (Heinemann, 1963)

Swell! This is a summary of the novel before the legend of Plath was widespread; before the nearly one to one association of Plath's biography to the novel. I have often wondered if Plath wrote this, or someone at Heinemann?

Just to round out the dust wrapper, designed by Thomas Simmonds, the back of the dust wrapper lists recent Heinemann fiction publications.

The front and rear covers of The Bell Jar (Heinemann, 1963)

These titles, in order of appearance, are:

Michael Noonan - The December Boys
Paul Smith - The Stubborn Season
Alison Lurie - Love and Friendship
Anthony Burgess - The Wanting Seed
Edward Upward - In the Thirties
Barbara Comyns - The Skin Chairs
Alfred Grossman - Many Slippery Errors
Jerome Weidman - My Father Sits in the Dark
Eric Ambler - The Light of Day
S. J. Perelman - The Rising Gorge
Paul Gallico - Coronation
Anthony Powell - A Dance to the Music of Time

Though I have never checked with any systematic focus or determination, I have often wondered if The Bell Jar by "Victoria Lucas" is listed on the back(s) of any Heinemann publications.

Famous Quotes of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath inspires us all in various and wonderful ways. She is in many respects a form of comfort to us, which is something that Esther Greenwood expresses in The Bell Jar , about a bath: "There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.'" We read and remember Sylvia Plath for many reasons, many of them deeply personal and private. But we commemorate her, too, in very public ways, as Anna of the long-standing Tumblr Loving Sylvia Plath , has been tracking, in the form of tattoos. (Anna's on Instagram with it too, as SylviaPlathInk .) The above bath quote is among Sylvia Plath's most famous. It often appears here and there and it is stripped of its context. But I think most people will know it is from her nove...

Sylvia Plath's Gravestone Vandalized

The following news story appeared online this morning: HEPTONSTALL, ENGLAND (APFS) - The small village of Heptonstall is once again in the news because of the grave site of American poet Sylvia Plath. The headstone controversy rose to a fever pitch in 1989 when Plath's grave was left unmarked for a long period of time after vandals repeatedly chiseled her married surname Hughes off the stone marker. Author Nick Hornby commented, "I like Plath, but the controversy reaching its fever pitch in the 80s had nothing to do with my book title choice." Today, however, it was discovered that the grave was defaced but in quite an unlikely fashion. This time, Plath's headstone has had slashed-off her maiden name "Plath," so the stone now reads "Sylvia Hughes." A statement posted on Twitter from @masculinistsfortedhughes (Masculinists for Ted Hughes) has claimed responsibility saying that, "We did this because as Ted Hughes' first wife, Sylvia de...

Sylvia Plath and McLean Hospital

In August when I was in the final preparations for the tour of Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar sites, I found that I had long been mistaken about a couple of things. This is my coming clean. It was my intention in this blog post to discuss just McLean, but I found myself deeply immersed in other aspects of Plath's recovery. The other thing I was mistaken about will be discussed in a separate blog post. I suppose I need to state from the outset that I am drawing conclusions from Plath's actual experiences from what she wrote in The Bell Jar and vice versa, taking information from the novel that is presently unconfirmed or murky and applying it to Plath's biography. There is enough in The Bell Jar , I think, based on real life to make these decisions. At the same time, I like to think that I know enough to distinguish where things are authentic and where details were clearly made up, slightly fudged, or out of chronological order. McLean Hospital was Plath's third and last...

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