Working as an intern for a Manhattan fashion magazine in the summer of 1953, Esther Greenwood is veritably on the brink of a brilliant future. That said, she also tightropes the edge of a psychic darkness that makes her world increasingly unreal, causing Esther's visions of the world to flit from the day-to-day trials of metropolitan life to the even more uncertain entanglements of a sexual neophyte to the never-ending nightlife of New York City. Sylvia Plath's only novel, The Bell Jar, is partially based on the gifted poet’s own life and continues to be celebrated for its razor-sharp portrait of 1950s society.

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Photo: The Bell Jar © M. Olival-Bartley