Trivia / The Bell Jar

• One-Book Author: The Bell Jar was the only novel Plath ever published. She never wrote another novel was that because she committed suicide shortly after The Bell Jar was published.
• Troubled Production: Knowing the depictions of real people (including her own mother) would be easily recognizable to those who knew her, Plath did not want The Bell Jar published in the U.S. until after her mother's death. Since Plath died shortly after the UK publication, her American publishers considered this Plath's Last Request and were prepared to uphold it. However, due to a loophole in international copyright law, the delay in American publication caused the book to fall into public domain in the States and another publisher, seeing renewed interest in Plath after her death, prepared to publish an unauthorized edition. Seeing that the book would go forward regardless, Plath's publisher decided to publish the book in 1971, eight years after its UK publication. Plath's mother Aurelia ultimately died in 1994.
• What Could Have Been: Plath wrote to several friends that she was considering a Spiritual Successor to The Bell Jar that would tell a similar story but through "the eyes of health," outlining the vague idea that an adult Esther Expy would travel abroad and eventually find a husband (not dissimilarly to how Plath herself moved to England and married after her mental breakdown in college). Plath died shortly after mentioning this sequel and no notes were ever found.