The Bell Jar

A semi-autobiographical novel by the American poet and writer Sylvia Plath, first published in London by William Heinemann in January 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. It follows Esther Greenwood, a talented young woman whose promising summer internship in New York gives way to a breakdown, describing her depression as the feeling of being trapped under a bell jar, struggling for breath. The novel closely parallels episodes from Plath's own life, including her 1953 breakdown and hospitalization, and she used a pseudonym partly to spare people close to her whose likenesses appear in it. It was not published in the United States under her own name until 14 April 1971, eight years after her death, when it became a bestseller. Often read as a roman a clef, it is Plath's only novel and, alongside Ariel, the work most responsible for her lasting reputation.