The Bell Jar/The Collected Poems

The Bell Jar/The Collected Poems Hardcover (Bonded Leather) - March 03, 2020 by Sylvia Plath (Author).

This volume combines two essential works by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Sylvia Plath.

The Bell Jar is Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanity. Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity 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.

The Collected Poems features Plath’s complete poetic works, edited and introduced by Ted Hughes who writes in his introduction: “By the time of her death on 11, February 1963, Sylvia Plath had written a large bulk of poetry. To my knowledge, she never scrapped any of her poetic efforts. With one or two exceptions, she brought every piece she worked on to some final form acceptable to her, rejecting at most the odd verse, or a false head or a false tail. Her attitude to her verse was artisan-like: if she couldn’t get a table out of the material, she was quite happy to get a chair, or even a toy. The end product for her was not so much a successful poem, as something that had temporarily exhausted her ingenuity. So this book contains not merely what verse she saved, but—after 1956—all she wrote.”

The Bell Jar/The Collected Poems is one of Barnes & Noble’s Collectible Editions classics. Each volume features authoritative texts by the world’s greatest authors in an exquisitely designed bonded-leather binding, with distinctive gilt edging and a ribbon bookmark. Decorative, durable, and collectible, these books offer hours of pleasure to readers young and old and are an indispensable cornerstone for every home library.

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About the Author

One of the most influential poets, novelists, and short story writers of the 20th century, Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was credited with advancing "confessional poetry." Her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar was published shortly before her suicide. In 1982, she won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for The Collected Poems. Plath married the poet Ted Hughes in 1956 and they had two children. They separated in 1962, shortly before her death.

Date of Birth: October 27, 1932

Date of Death: February 11, 1963

Place of Birth: Boston, Massachusetts

Place of Death: London, England

Education: B.A., Smith College, 1955; Fulbright Scholar, Cambridge University