#121 in Classics
The Bell Jar
- 262
- Pages
- about 5 h
- Reading time
- Film 1979
- On screen
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Our view
Sylvia Plath’s only novel follows a young woman’s slide into mental illness with unsparing exactness. The story is closely modelled on the author’s own experience. It is not a comforting book, and it does not try to be liked: even readers drawn to sad stories sometimes find they cannot get close to it. Worth reading for its honesty, at a time when one can take the darkness.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Bell Jar is the only novel written by the American writer and poet Sylvia Plath. Originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963, the novel is supposedly semi-autobiographical, with the names of places and people changed. The book is often regarded as a roman à clef because the protagonist's descent into mental illness parallels Plath's own experiences with what may have been clinical depression. Plath died by suicide a month after its first UK publication.
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen once.
- FilmThe Bell JarIMDb
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.9 across 1,744 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 92% of the weight and the score stays at 7.9 — the Classics average of 7.7 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.3 | 70 | 4% |
| Hardcover | 7.9 | 1.7K | 96% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Bell Jar?
It has 262 pages — longer than 53% of the ranked books in Classics.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Classics — and a score of 7.9, the closest to this book.
