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A Novel (Perennial Classics)
by Sylvia Plath
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.
To what audience would you recommend Cursed Daughters? Is there another book or author you feel addresses related themes or who writes in a similar style?
...pressures of family expectations would like this book. For similar picks, All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven definitely comes to mind as well as The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Both explore the pressures of social and family conformity and mental health issues including self identity crises.
-Jo_S
The Forgotten Book Club Reading list
...Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion The Tempest by William Shakespeare The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes Lord of the Flies by Williams Golding Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray Brave...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (10/16/2025)
...bia of the 1950's. She is trying to find her identity but is suffocating as she tries to be the perfect wife at a time when women were misunderstood. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is often referred to in the context of the book. I don't know if this book is for everyone, however it reveals the progress and understanding of the...
-Lynne_G
"An enchanting book. The author wears her scholarship with grace, and the amazing story she has to tell is recounted with humor and understanding." ―Atlantic Monthly
"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
"Esther Greenwood's account of her years in the bell jar is as clear and readable as it is witty and disturbing... . [This] is not a potboiler, nor a series of ungrateful caricatures: it is literature." ―New York Times
This information about The Bell Jar was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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.
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