Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar Turns 50 (again)

On 14 April 1971, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath was published in the US. The fiftieth anniversary of that publication just occurred, quietly, last month. The novel's first fiftieth anniversary in 2013 was a very big deal as it was also the fiftieth of Plath's death and articles were published left and right to commemorate the writer and her works. In his Annotated Bibliography of Sylvia Plath, Stephen Tabor reports that Publisher's Weekly initially listed The Bell Jar was slated to be published on 7 April. Once it appeared it was a success becoming a best seller which kept Harper & Row's printers busy. Tabor reports "two reprints in April 1971, two more in May, and further printings in July, August, and September 1971" (17).

The American edition includes a "biographical note" by Lois Ames which published some of Plath's drawings, her "Mlle's Last Word on College, '53", and her poem "Mad Girl's Love Song". (Read the curious history of that poem here.)

Plath's "Last Word" was composed on or around 5 June 1953 when she was in her first days of being the Guest Managing Editor of Mademoiselle. It begins "We're stargazers this season, bewitched by an atmosphere of evening blue." It accompanied the photograph of the Guest Editors positioned in the shape of a star, Plath at the top, holding hands, in Central Park, which was taken on 3 June 1953.

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All links accessed 16 May 2021.

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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