59 Years of Book Covers for The Bell Jar from All Over the World
Happy Birthday to Sylvia Plath’s Classic
On January 14, 1963, poet Sylvia Plath published her first novel in England under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas.” The book had a positive but relatively quiet reception; only a few weeks after its publication, on February 11, Plath would die by suicide. It wasn’t published in the US until 1971, when it became an instant best seller; since then it has been translated into many languages and published all over the world. 59 years after its original publication, it is still a touchstone of international literary culture—not least, for better or worse, as a reliable shorthand for angsty-but-highbrow teenage emotions.
To mark the book’s 59th birthday, here are 59 of its best, weirdest, and most unusual covers—for even more, check out the databases on A celebration, this is and the extensive editions listed on Goodreads, which were both very helpful research tools.
First Edition, Heinemann (UK), 1963
Readers Union Edition (UK), 1964
First Faber (UK) edition, 1966
Italian edition, 1968
First US Edition, Harper & Row, 1971
Danish Edition, 1975
Serbian edition, 1976
Hungarian edition, 1977
Denoël (French) edition, 1977
Italian edition, 1979
Bantam Books (UK) 1981 edition
Dutch edition, 1981
Bulgarian edition, 1981
Faber and Faber (UK) 1982 edition; Cover art by Donna Muir
Αίολος (Greek) edition, 1984
Den norske Bokklubben (Norwegian) edition, 1986
Európa (Hungarian) edition, 1987
Can Yayınları (Turkish) edition, 1987
Polish edition, 1989
Croatian edition, 1991
Quality paperback club edition, 1993
Knopf Everyman Library edition, 1998
Hungarian edition, 1999
Swedish edition, 1999
Faber (UK) 1999 edition
Harper Perennial Classics 1999 edition
Editora Record (Portuguese) edition, 1999
Mondadori (Italian) edition, 2000
Амфора (Russian) edition, 2000
Faber and Faber (UK) 2001 edition
Polirom (Romanian) edition, 2003
Harper Perennial 2005 edition
Harper Perennial 2006 edition
Korean edition, 2008
Faber Firsts (UK) 2009 edition
كلمة (Arabic) edition, 2011
Faber (UK) 50th Anniversary edition, 2013
Harper Perennial 50th anniversary edition, 2013
Albert Bonniers Förlag (Swedish) edition, 2013
麥田出版社 (Chinese) edition, 2013
Denoël (French) edition, 2014
Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS (Norwegian) edition, 2014
Hungarian edition, 2014
Bulgarian edition, 2015
French edition, 2016
Albanian Edition, 2017
Russian edition, 2017
Thai edition, 2018
Romanian edition, 2018
Estonian edition, 2019
Polish edition, 2019
Portuguese edition, 2019
Russian edition, 2019
Faber (UK), 2019
Arabic edition, 2020
Image (Thai) edition, date unknown
Dutch edition, date unknown,
Swedish edition, date unknown
Swedish edition, date unknown
Emily Temple
Emily Temple is the managing editor at Lit Hub. Her first novel, The Lightness, was published by William Morrow/HarperCollins in June 2020. You can buy it here.
