On 24 June 2015, Bonhams the auctioneers in London sold an uncorrected proof copy of The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath’s only novel, published in 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. The proof sold for £5250. The Bell Jar did not appear under Sylvia Plath’s real name until 1966.
Anthony Burgess reviewed this book in the Observer when it was first published, in a round-up of new fiction headlined ‘Transatlantic Englishmen’ on 27 January 1963. His review was very positive: he described The Bell Jar as ‘a very competent first novel […] Where there might have been sensationalism there is sensitivity and decorum; also, the characterisation is economical but full, and the style is careful without being laboured or pretentious.’
Burgess had been reviewing books for the Observer since 1962. He began his journalistic career in England after his return from Brunei in 1959, at first writing radio talks that were later published in the Listener. Burgess’s first agent was Peter Janson-Smith, with whom he began working in 1960, and it seems likely that after this point Burgess was able to secure occasional reviewing work with the TLS and, more significantly, a regular fortnightly column with the Yorkshire Post from January 1961. These Yorkshire Post pieces are mostly batch reviews of new novels, and most of Burgess’s subjects have long since disappeared from view. However, there are some reviews of books which came to be viewed as important — by writers such as Joseph Heller, Iris Murdoch, Vladimir Nabokov and Doris Lessing. Burgess returned to many of these novels in his later critical writing.
Burgess parted company with the Yorkshire Post in May 1963 after he reviewed the first of his own Enderby novels, published under the pseudonym Joseph Kell. By this point he was writing regularly for the Observer and was also writing television reviews for the Listener, as well as having produced six novels in the preceding two years. Soon after the round-up review of novels including The Bell Jar, Burgess was promoted to writing longer reviews of individual novels for the Observer. He continued to contribute to the Observer until his death in 1993.
The Anthony Burgess / Observer Prize for Arts Journalism is our annual writing competition. Celebrating the best of new writing about the arts, the prize awards £4000 for the best previously unpublished reviews of a book, film, concert, ballet, stage play, art exhibition or TV show.
