🥳 Happy Birthday The Bell Jar! 🎂 The Sylva Plath Calendar - 60 years ago today: Sylvia Plath‘s only novel The Bell Jar was published in the UK on Monday, 14 January 1963 by Heinemann under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, 28 days before her death. Plath called the novel “an autobiographical apprentice work which I had to write in order to free myself from the past” and said: “What I’ve done is to throw together events from my own life, fictionalizing to add color- it’s a pot boiler really, but I think it will show how isolated a person feels when he is suffering a breakdown…. I’ve tried to picture my world and the people in it as seen through the distorting lens of a bell jar” Source: Biographical Note by Lois Ames, in: The Bell Jar, Bantam Windstone, 1981 . If you want to learn more about the creation and publication history of The Bell Jar, I highly recommend Peter K. Steinberg’s blog post from 14 January 2013 at sylviaplathinfo.blogspot.com: “Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar Published 50 Years Ago Today”. . Photo: The synopsis page from the uncorrected pre-publication proof copy of Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Bell Jar’ that was also included in the first Heinemann edition; with Plath’s Devon address in her handwriting. This copy belonged to her daughter, Frieda Hughes. Sold for £ 75,000 at an auction at Bonhams in March 2018. 📷 bonhams.com/auction/24633/lot/359/plath-sylvia-the-bell-jar-by-victoria-lucas-sylvia-plaths-uncorrected-proof-copy-with-her-own-manuscript-corrections-and-ownershsip-inscription-heinemann-1962/
