by SylviaPlath (Author)
I lay there alone in bed, feeling the black shadow creeping up the underside of the world like a flood tide. Nothing held, nothing was left. The silver airplanes and the silver capes all dissolved and vanished, wiped away like the crude drawings of a child in coloured chalk from the colossal blackboard of the dark. The writings in this collection outline Plath's early preoccupation with issues of mental illness, creativity and femininity, all of which would become recurrent themes in her later work. They offer special insight into her development as a writer, and arguably paved the way for her only full-length piece of prose writing, the loosely veiled fictional autobiography, The Bell Jar. This second edition contains the thirteen stories included in the first edition together with five pieces of her journalism, as well as a few fragments from her journal; and a further nine stories selected from the Indiana archive.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 352
Publisher: Faber and Faber, London
Published: 09 Apr 1979
ISBN 10: 0571049893
ISBN 13: 9780571049899
Book Overview: Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: and other prose writings, by Sylvia Plath, is a collection of early prose stories, journalism and journal fragments exploring the themes of mental illness, creativity and gender, from one of the twentieth century's most idiosyncratic voices.