‘The Bell Jar’ Cover Inspires Online Parodies

By Jason Boog 

When the UK publisher Faber released the cover art for a 50th anniversary edition of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, online critics attacked the controversial cover image.

Below, we’ve collected parody book covers inspired by the updated cover, including A Hunger Games-themed cover, go-go dancers and clowns. What is your favorite?

The London Review of Books wrote about the controversy:

The first edition of The Bell Jar to appear under Sylvia Plath’s name was published by Faber in 1967, with a cover designed by Shirley Tucker. This month Faber have brought out a 50th anniversary edition of the novel (it was first published by Heinemann in 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas), with a cover about as far from Tucker’s Bridget Rileyish concentric circles as you can get: a stock photo from the 1950s of a woman with a powder compact. As Dustin Kurtz, a marketing manager at Melville House, tweeted, “How is this cover anything but a ‘f*** you’ to women everywhere?”