The Bell Jar

Originally published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas in 1963 -- only a month before the author's suicide -- Sylvia Plath's harrowing autobiographical novel traces a young woman's descent into an emotional breakdown. This brilliant and disturbing story of Esther Greenwood's journey from the glamorous world of magazine publishing in New York to the isolating world of the asylum has become one of the most famous books of the late 20th century, and still has all its power to shock and move us.