Faber published Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams on 17 October 1977. Harper & Row published it about 15 months later on 2 January 1979.

In this section I read each of the stories in the British Edition and wrote short synopses of each. The British edition prints two more stories than the American version, "A Day in June" and "The Green Rock", both written in 1949.*

The synopses are here.

These reviews are very basic and done so on purpose. Many of Plath's short stories were formula written, in that she studied the contemporarily published short stories and then wrote stories aimed at the market. It is an example of the genius that she possessed as well as an example of her apprenticeship.

In the reviews, I have made some references to the real events of Plath's life that she used as material for her stories.

Plath wrote many more short stories than those which appear in Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. With one known exception, all short stories contained in this volume appeared in print. The one exception is a story Plath called "The Lucky Stone". A British women's weekly magazine, My Weekly, published this story under a different title, "The Perfect Place", in their 28 October 1961 issue. Drafts of this story are held in the Sylvia Plath collections at Emory University and Smith College, respectively. For more information on this story and its discovery, please see pages 97, 99, 135-6 in my biography.

*The Embers Handpress published these stories individually in 1981 and 1982, respectively, as fine press limited editions.

A selection of reviews of Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams
Alvarez, A. "The prison of prose." The Observer. October 16, 1977: 36.

Atwood, Margaret. "Poet's Prose." The New York Times Book Review. January 28, 1979: 10, 31.

Bere, Carol. Southern Humanities Review. Fall 1979: 358-60.

Blow, Simon. "Sylvia Plath's Prose." Books and Bookmen. June 1978: 42-3.

Butler, Christopher. "Sylvia Plath's Prose." New Review. December 1977/January 1978: 68-9.

Cosgrave, Mary Silva. Horn Book Magazine. April 1979: 220.

Davies, Russell. "Appendicitis." New Statesman. November 25, 1977.

Dick, Kay. The Times of London. December 1, 1977: 9.

Dowie, William. America. March 3, 1979: 165-6.

Fraser, G. S. "Pass to the centre." Listener. October 27, 1977: 541-2.

Hausser, Leola. Best Sellers. June 1979: 105.

Hill, Douglas. "Living and Dying." Canadian Forum. June 1978: 62-4.

Homberger, Eric. Journal of American Studies. August 1979: 281-2.

Juhasz, Suzanne. Library Journal. December 15, 1976: 2522.

Leider, Emily. "Sylvia Plath and Superman." San Francisco Review of Books. June 1979: 23-4.

McLellan, Joseph. "Sylvia Plath and the Landscape of the Soul." Washington Post. January 19,
     1979: D-19.

Miner, Harriet. "A Poet's Fateful Final Journey." San Francisco Chronicle. February 18, 1979: 58.

New York Times Book Review. February 5, 1980: 33.

Peschmann, Hermann. "From Inside the Bell Jar." Times Educational Supplement. December 30,
     1977: 22.

Pollitt, Katha. "Aesthetic Suicide." Harper's Magazine. February 1979: 83-6.

Publishers Weekly. November 6, 1978.

Rosenblum, Harriet S. "Another Sampling of Plath Legacy." Democrat and Chronicle. February 4,
     1979: G-2.

Rubenstein, Roberta. "Sylvia Plath: Uneven Fragments of an 'Inner Biography'." Chicago
     Tribune. December 24, 1978: 3.

Sage, Lorna. "Death and marriage." Times Literary Supplement. October 21, 1977: 1235.

Smith Alumnae Quarterly. November 1979: 26.

Thompson, Jan. Ambit. 1978: 88-9.