How Did Sylvia Plath Write The Bell Jar

American author, Sylvia Plath, is best know for her powerful and emotional writing style. Her poems and her highly acclaimed novel, The Bell Jar, have made her one of the most dynamic writers of the 20th century. Her poems clearly illustrate the agony and turmoil that were in her life at the time. Her only novel, The Bell Jar, is a semi-autobiographical account of her life. The novel parallels the turmoil she experienced in her life. Her depression and mental instability set the tone to many of her poems and her novel. Plath was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. She started writing at an early age. When she was eight-years-old, her father was sick with cancer and died, and "when the eight-year-old Sylvia was informed of her father's death, she proclaimed 'I'll never speak to God again.'" (Web). Shortly after her father's death, her first poem, "Poem" was published in the children's section of the Boston Hearald newspaper. "It was a short poem, 'about what I see and hear on hot summer nights." (Web).

Sylvia was still having a hard time dealing with the death of her father. Her mother thought that by sending her to school and being with children her own age would help her deal with her emotions. "Her strong and conflicting emotions of love, hate, anger and grief at the loss of her father were to affect Sylvia for the rest of her life."(Web). In junior high and high school she wrote for the school paper. "In her senior year, her story "And Summer Will Not Come Again" was accepted for publication in Seventeen magazine, and she also saw the first national publication of one of her poems when "Bitter Strawberries" appeared in The Christian Science Monitor just after her graduation in 1950 -- where Plath graduated first in her class."