The Bell Jar question

Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangerengba is a gem. It is not about depression per se, but speaks to mental illness and its confluence with colonialism in Zimbabwe. And it is most definitely feminist.

Not exactly along the same lines, but one that I liked from around the same time period is Franny and Zooey, by JD Salinger. It's a pretty quick read, too. Even better, though...The Diary of Anais Nin. Her writing is poetic, she's very psychoanalytical, and she spends most of her time hanging out in smokey French cafes with her brilliant contemporaries.

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

I recommend The Snake Pit, Counterclockwise and The Other Caroline, all by Mary Jane Ward. Plath based some of the hospital story in The Bell Jar on The Snake Pit.

Ward had a nervous breakdown, was misdiagnosed schizophrenic and locked up in a state institution. What happened to her there was what happened to the majority of people diagnosed with mental illness, and it makes Plath's account look like a luxury cruise.

Sylvia went to the hospital described in Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America's Premier Mental Hospital -- it catered to the well-known and well-off (which doesn't mean they weren't truly suffering, only that they could afford the best treatment available).

The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic

Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals

Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, And The Enduring Mistreatment Of The Mentally Ill.

If you read I Never Promised You a Rose Garden you should also read To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann to learn about what really happened with Joanne Greenberg. Rose Garden is one of the most misunderstood books of my generation. Greenberg was actually trying to debunk the popular notion that creativity and insanity are linked.

I would recommend Girl, Interrupted; it's thematically similar. I didn't like Prozac Nation as much, although I know a lot of people rather enjoy it. One of my absolute favorite books of all time is A Fan's Notes, which also deals with a character's mental illness. The book is billed as fiction, but it's mostly memoir. It's very much a sort of dude story (sports, advertising, the 1950s, yada yada), but it remains one of my favorite reads.

My Year if Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh

SO SAD today - Melissa Broder

The Pisces - Melissa Broder

Winter in Sokcho

I suggest Running with Scissors as it also deals realistically with mental health and dysfunctionality of relationships. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is also a fantastic book. If you've seen the movie, still give this short book a read -- it's a prime example of book-is-better-than-the-movie syndrome (even though the movie was brilliant as well).

If you were looking for readings that are equally as poetic as Plath, I suggest any collection of poems by Anne Sexton and/or Allen Ginsberg. They're both my personal favorites of their time.

Well based in the same atmosphere of metal illiness, I could recommend you Tokio Blues by Haruki Murakani, and Girl interrupted.
Also about suicidal things you should give a look to Ghost world...

Play It As It Lays, by Joan Didion.

Reaching way back, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. Neither feminist nor about depression, but it's a classic, an excellent story and an easy read. And yes to other suggestions for Anne Sexton's work and "Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters" which illustrates the potential perils for women who live in the service of their art.

A few I haven't seen listed: Wasted: A Memoir Of Anorexia And Bulimia, Skin Game,Climbing The Broken Stairs, A Memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Iodine: A Novel. One you might not ordinary throw in this grouping, but should as it's fascinating, Peter Wyden "Stella, One Woman's True Tale of Evil, Betrayal, and Survival in Hitler's Germany".

Goodreads author http://karenwintersschwartz.com/ wrote, "Where Are the Cocoa Puffs?: A Family's Journey Through Bipolar Disorder" which has a rebellious teenaged girl as the central character. She has another coming out in May 2012, called, "reis's pieces,love, loss and schizophrenia". Karen Winters Schwartz

I would second the Shirley Jackson suggestion but would recommend We Have Always Lived in the Castle. It was beautifully written and just as harrowing.

I also loved White Oleander.

You might like certain aspects of The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, but it's not for everyone.

I would suggest I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. The girl also suffered mental illness to the point of creating another world in her head.

Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir by Lauren Slater

I would reccomend sybil .thats about m.p.d and go ask alice.which is about drugsand peerpressureand a graet ,fast read.

How about the Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams. Slightly different as it deals with age related mental illness but its very good.

I would recommend Prozac Nation to you by Wurtzel, or Beside the Sea by Véronique Olmi.It is the most unsettling book I've ever read.

Though it's about multiple personality disorder and not depression, I recommend Shirley Jackson's The Bird's Nest. Remember "The Lottery" from your junior high school days? Well, this is a full-length novel by the very same author, and with even more surprises.

I would strongly recommend 'White Oleander' by Janet Fitch, just finished reading it myself and I just know you'll enjoy it if you enjoyed Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. It's more modern and shocking than the more subtle hints of repression in Woolf and Plath, but there's definitely a connection in feminism. One of my favorite novels.

Along with an above reader, I recommend Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" (in it, Woolf explores the mental illness of a returning soldier) and also M. Cunningham's "The Hours" (in which he explores Woolf's mental illness). I also know that some books have been written about Virginia Woolf's battle w/ manic-depression.

Although not written by a feminist, I highly recommend William Styron's "Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness." At just 80 or so pages, it's a very concise but very vivid and haunting discussion of his own struggle w/ depression. Probably the best book I've ever read about clinical depression.

I got completely hooked on Sylvia Plath and absolutely loved "The Unabridged Journals Of Sylvia Plath" -which may be too much about the author for you- but her depiction of life with depression is like none other I've ever read. Also, "Prozac Diary" by Lauren Slater as well as "Prozac Nation" by Elizabeth Wurtzel are quite good.Even though Kay Redfield Jamison has bipolar disorder her portrayal of her incredible lows is another great choice. That one's called "An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness". This is a subject that I'm deeply interested in as well. Almost forgot, the classic "Girl, Interrupted" by Susanna Kaysen...

Have you read Johnny Panic & The Bible Of Dreams also by Sylvia Plath? It's a collection of short stories and prose pieces. I'd also agree with Jean Rhys and Virginia Woolf - although personally I've never been able to 'get into' Woolf I know people who adore her.
Also just remembered An Angel at My Table by Janet Frame

Try Virginia Woolf, especially her most famous, Mrs. Dalloway. After you've read that, try Michael Cunningham's book, The Hours. It's an amazing examination of women (including Woolf herself) struggling with their identities in numerous eras of the 20th century.

I've read The Glass Castle and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in that last few months. Both stories are about women who should have been depressed but weren't. They were survivors and optimistic despite circumstances no children should have to endure. Very moving books....both of them.

I read The Catcher in the Rye at the same time as this, so the two books are sort of glued together in my mind. If you want to know more about Plath, her poetry gives you a good glimpse of her emotional disorder. Check out The Collected Poems or Ariel