Reviving the Journals of Sylvia Plath - The British Library

Sylvia Plath

Whatever brought you here, whoever you are, you're likely to recognize the name of Sylvia Plath. Her 1963 novel The Bell Jar has been a companion of many students whose writing, language or literature class syllabi required it. Beyond this, Plath was a renowned artist of her time, known for her early and prolific stabs at production and successful publication.¹

As a young girl, Plath authored local pieces and experimented with painting, but was first a writer and succeeded in being nationally published soon after high school. Students and fans of Plath will recall her personalized, get-to-know-me style of revelational writing and may remember some of the unfortunate details of her life experience, including her suicide-- only one month after the publication of her first and only novel.

The Bell Jar would eventually be adapted for film, in the 1979 production of the same name.² While popular, the film was criticized for it's lack of insight into the life of the young woman whose productive mind would eventually disintegrate to the precarious state which invited and ultimately assured her demise.

See images of some of Sylvia Plath's typewritten journal pages and enjoy Karen Kukil's retrospective of Plath's style and motivations, via the British Library project Discovering Literature: Reviving the Journals of Sylvia Plath - The British Library

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1 Website Author(s). Poets.org. Poets. Sylvia Plath. https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/sylvia-plath Retrieved Jan 2017.^↩

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2 Wikipedia Authors. The Bell Jar (Film). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Jar_(film). Retrieved Jan 2017.^↩