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It explains how the manuscript arrived at Harper and Row under the Eugene F. Saxton Fellowship, why Harper editors initially rejected it, and how Plath’s existing U.S. and U.K. publishers shaped its path. It also connects the novel’s bleak depression themes with Plath’s life circumstances, including her death in 1963 and the contrasting levels of fame that followed.",{"@graph":69,"@context":123},[70,84,106],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":15,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-bell-jar-foreword-by-frances-mccullough/330028/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-bell-jar-foreword-by-frances-mccullough/330028.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Evangeline","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-28","2026-09-21",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":105},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",13,{"@type":107,"mainEntity":108},"FAQPage",[109,115,119],{"name":110,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":112},"What role did the Eugene F. Saxton Fellowship play in The Bell Jar’s submission to Harper and Row?","Question",{"text":113,"@type":114},"The fellowship, affiliated with Harper and Row, supported Plath’s writing and required submission of the final manuscript to the Saxton committee for consideration.","Answer",{"name":116,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":117},"Why was The Bell Jar initially disappointing to the Harper editors who read it?",{"text":118,"@type":114},"Two older women editors with a special interest in poetry read it seeking a first look at a new voice, but they found it disappointing, juvenile, and overwrought.",{"name":120,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":121},"How did Plath’s death affect the novel’s subsequent attention in England?",{"text":122,"@type":114},"Plath’s suicide on February 11, 1963 brought her instant fame in England, where she was already known through appearances and publications, and where the book gained renewed prominence.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":125,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":127,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":129,"site_id":62},330028,1790629743,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":132},{"doc_id":129,"user_id":133,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":134,"doc_module":4,"category_id":14,"category_name":15,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":135,"file_id":136,"file_url":137,"file_type":138,"file_size":139,"view_count":105,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":140,"language":141,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":142,"faqs":143,"seo_title":144,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":145,"read_time":146},13056703019662,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/be000253a8e92610077?_k=1778726343310543188","THE BELL JAR  \nSylvia Plath  \nfor Elizabeth and David  \nTABLE OF CONTENTS  \nForeword  \n12345678910111213141516 17 18 19 20  \nForeword  \nby Frances McCullough  \nYou might think that classics like The Bell Jar are immediately recognized the moment they reach a publisher ’s office. But publishing history is rife with stories about classic novels that barely squeaked into print, from Nightwood to A Confederacy of Dunces, and The Bell jar is one of them. It’shard to say whether, if Sylvia Plath had lived--she’d be a senior citizen on her sixty-fifth birthday, October 27th, 1997--the novel would ever have been published in this country: Certainly it would not have been published until her mother died, which would have kept it from our shores until the early ‘90s. And by that time, Plath might have become a major novelist who might see her first book in a quite different light.  \nBut of course Plath did die a tragic death at the age of thirty,  \nand the book’s subsequent history has everything to do with that fact. The first time her manuscript came into the offices at Harper and Row in late 1962 it was under the auspices of the Eugene F. Saxton Fellowship, a grant affiliated with the publishing house that supported the writing of the book. The grant required Plath to submit the final manuscript to the Saxton committee. Two Harper editors, both older women with a special interest in poetry, read the novel in hopes of getting first crack at a new voice in the literary world--but both of them found it disappointing, juvenile andoverwrought. In effect, they rejected the book, though it hadn’t been offered to them officially, and in fact Plath was quite insistent that it shouldn’t be published in America because its roman-à-clef elements would be so hurtful to her family and their friends.  \nActually, Plath already had an American publisher. Knopf had bought her first book of poems, The Colossus (1962), an event that triggered the first outpouring of prose that became The Bell jar. For a long time Plath had been thinking about writing a novel; her ambitions to break into “the slicks,” especially the Ladies Home journal) were constantly on the back burner as she concentrated on her poems. Addressing her as “Dear Mrs. Hughes,” the Saxton Fellowship had turned down her poetry manuscript, the one that became The Colossus) so it must have been a particular point of pride when they later accepted The Bell jar project.  \nShe also had a British publisher: William Heinemann Limited  \nhad published The Colossus in the fall of 1960, and agreed to publish The Bell jar) under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas (though everyone in literary London knew Plath was the author), in January 1963--which turned out to be just a few weeks before Plath’s death. Reviews were lukewarm, and Plath was deeply stung by them. But she had already begun another novel the previous spring, and by her mother ’s account, there was yet another finished one that went up in a bonfire one day when Plath was in a rage. Although she wasn’tas surefooted in her fiction as she was in poetry, she planned to write “novel after novel” once her book of poems (Ariel) was finished.  \nBut by the time The Bell Jar came out in London, Plath was inextremis; her marriage to poet Ted Hughes was over, she was in a panic about money, and had moved to a bare flat in London with her two small children in the coldest British winter in a hundred years. All three of them had the flu, there was no phone, and there was no help with child care. She was well aware of the brilliance of the poems she was writing--and in fact A. Alvarez, the leading critic of the day, had told her they deserved a Pulitzer. But even that knowledge didn’t save her from the dreaded bell jar experience, the sudden descent into deep depression that had triggered her first suicide attempt in the summer described in the novel. A number of the same elements were in place this time: the abrupt departure of the central male figure in her li","cbCaiaZ7t80jwgSl","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiaZ7t80jwgSl","pdf",1408715,192,"English","# Foreword\n## Frances McCullough","[{\"question\":\"What role did the Eugene F. Saxton Fellowship play in The Bell Jar’s submission to Harper and Row?\",\"answer\":\"The fellowship, affiliated with Harper and Row, supported Plath’s writing and required submission of the final manuscript to the Saxton committee for consideration.\"},{\"question\":\"Why was The Bell Jar initially disappointing to the Harper editors who read it?\",\"answer\":\"Two older women editors with a special interest in poetry read it seeking a first look at a new voice, but they found it disappointing, juvenile, and overwrought.\"},{\"question\":\"How did Plath’s death affect the novel’s subsequent attention in England?\",\"answer\":\"Plath’s suicide on February 11, 1963 brought her instant fame in England, where she was already known through appearances and publications, and where the book gained renewed prominence.\"}]","The Bell Jar - Foreword - by Frances McCullough | PDF",1789986596,296]