Ted Hughes
Encyclopedia
Edward James Hughes OM
(17 August 193028 October 1998), more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate
from 1984 until his death.
Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath
, from 1956 until her death by suicide in 1963 at the age of 30. His part in the relationship became controversial to some feminists
and (particularly) American admirers of Plath. His last poetic work, Birthday Letters
(1998), explored their complex relationship. These poems make reference to Plath's suicide, but none of them addresses directly the circumstances of her death. A poem discovered in October 2010, Last letter, describes what happened during the three days leading up to Plath's suicide.
In 2008 The Times
ranked Hughes fourth on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers
since 1945".
, West Riding of Yorkshire to William Henry and Edith (née Farrar) Hughes and raised among the local farms of the Calder valley
and on the Pennine moorland. Hughes' sister Olwyn was two years his senior and his brother Gerald was older than him by ten years.Bell (2002) p4 His mother's family could trace their ancestry back to William de Ferrières, who came to England with William the Conqueror in the 11th century. Her own father had founded the religious community of Little Gidding
.Keith Sagar, "Hughes, Edward James (1930–1998)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 Most of the more recent generations of his family had worked in the clothing and milling industries in the area. Hughes's father, a joiner, had joined the Lancashire Fusiliers
and fought at Ypres. 30 000 had joined; nearly half were killed in action. A bullet narrowly escaped killing William Hughes when it lodged in a paybook in his breast pocket.He was one of just 17 men of his regiment to return from the Dardanelles Campaign (1915-6). The stories of Flanders fields
filled Hughes' childhood imagination (later described in the poem "Out"). Hughes noted, "my first six years shaped everything."
Hughes loved hunting and fishing, swimming and picnicking with his family. He attended the Burnley Road School until he was seven his family moved to Mexborough
, South Yorkshire
, then attending Schofield Street junior school. His parents ran a newsagent's and tobacconist's shop. In Poetry in Making he recalled that he was fascinated by animals, collecting and drawing toy lead creatures. He acted as retriever when his elder brother gamekeeper shot magpies, owls, rats and curlews, growing up surrounded by the harsh realities of working farms in the valleys and on the moors.Sagar (1978), p6 During his time in Mexborough he explored Manor Farm at Old Denaby
, which he said he would come to know "better than any place on earth". His earliest poem "The Thought Fox", and earliest story "The Rain Horse" were recollections of the area. A close friend at the time, John Wholey, took Hughes to the Crookhill estate above Conisbrough where the boys spent great swathes of time. Hughes became close to the family and learnt a lot about wildlife from Wholey's father, a game keeper. He came to view fishing as an almost religious experience.
Hughes attended Mexborough Grammar School, where a succession of teachers encouraged him to write, and develop his interest in poetry. Teachers McLeod and Mayne introduced him to the poets Hopkins and Eliot. Hughes was mentored by his sister Olwyn, who was well versed in poetry, and his teacher John Fisher. Poet Harold Massingham
also attended this school and was also mentored by Fisher. In 1946 one of Hughes' early poems, "Wild West" and a short story were published in the grammar school magazine The Don and Dearne, followed by further poems in 1948. By 16 he had no other thought than being a poet.
During the same year Hughes won an open exhibition
in English at Pembroke College, Cambridge
, but chose to do his National Service
first. His two years of National Service (1949–51) passed comparatively easily. Hughes was stationed as a ground wireless mechanic in the RAF on an isolated three-man station in east Yorkshire, a time during which he had nothing to do but "read and reread Shakespeare and watch the grass grow". He learnt many of the plays by heart and memorised great quantities of Yeats
' poetry.
under M. J. C. Hodhart, an authority on balladic forms. Hughes felt encouraged and supported by Hodhart's supervision, but attended few lectures and wrote no more poetry at this time, feeling stifled by literary academia and the "terrible, suffocating, maternal octopus" of literary tradition.Sagar (1978), p8 He wrote, "I might say, that I had as much talent for Leavis
-style dismantling of texts as anyone else, I even had a special bent for it, nearly a sadistic streak there, but it seemed to me not only a foolish game, but deeply destructive of myself." In his third year he transferred to anthropology
and archaeology
, both of which would later inform his poetry. He did not excel as a scholar.Bell (2002), p5 His first published poetry appeared in Chequer. A poem "The little boys and the seasons", written during this time, was published in Granta
, under the pseudonym Daniel Hearing.Sagar (1978) p9
After university, living in London and Cambridge, Hughes went on to have many varied jobs including working as a rose gardener, a night watchman and a reader for the British film company J. Arthur Rank
. He also worked in a local zoo, a post that offered plentiful opportunities to observe animals at close quarters. On 26 February 1956, Hughes and his friends held a party to launch St. Botolph's Review
, which had a single issue. In it Hughes had four poems. At the party he met the American poet Sylvia Plath
, who was studying at Cambridge on a Fulbright Scholarship. She had already published extensively, having won various awards, and had come especially to meet Hughes and his fellow poet Lucas Myers. There was a great mutual attraction but they did not meet again for another month, when Plath was passing through London on her way to Paris. She visited him again on her return three weeks later.
Hughes and Plath dated and then were married at St George the Martyr Holborn
, on 16 June 1956, four months after they had first met. The date, Bloomsday
was purposely chosen in honour of James Joyce
.Plath's mother was the only wedding guest and she accompanied them on their honeymoon to Benidorm
on the Spanish coast.Bell (2002), p6 Hughes's biographers note that Plath did not relate her history of depression and suicide to him until much later.Reflecting later in Birthday Letters, Hughes commented that early on he could see chasms of difference between himself and Plath, but that in the first years of their marriage they both felt happy and supported, avidly pursuing their writing careers. On returning to Cambridge, they lived at 55 Eltisley Avenue. That year they each had poems published in The Nation
, Poetry
and The Atlantic.Sagar (1978), p11 Plath typed up Hughes' manuscript for his collection Hawk In The Rain which went on to win a poetry competition run by the Poetry centre of the Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association of New York
. The first prize was publication by Harper
and Hughes garnered widespread critical acclaim with the book's release in September 1957, winning a Somerset Maugham Award
. The work favoured hard hitting trochee
s and spondee
s reminiscent of middle English over gentile latinate sounds; a style he used throughout his career.
The couple moved to America so that Plath could take a teaching position at her alma mater, Smith College
; during this time Hughes taught at the University of Massachusetts
, Amherst. In 1958 they met Leonard Baskin
who would later illustrate many of Hughes' books, including Crow.The couple returned to England, staying for a short while back in Heptonstall
and then finding a small flat in Primrose Hill
, London. They were both writing, Hughes working on programmes for the BBC as well as producing essays, articles, reviews and talks.Bell, Charlie (2002) Ted Hughes Hodder and Stoughton, p7 During this time he wrote the poems that would be published in Wodwo (1967) and Recklings (1966). In March 1960 Lupercal came out and won the Hawthornden Prize
. He found he was being label as the poet of the wild, writing only about animals. He began to seriously explore myth and esoteric practices within as shamanism, Buddhism and alchemy, perceiving that that imagination could heal dualistic splits in the human psyche and poetry was the language of the work.
Hughes and Plath had two children, Frieda Rebecca
(1960) and Nicholas Farrar
(1962) and in 1961, bought the house Court Green
, in North Tawton
, Devon
. In the summer of 1962 Hughes began an affair with Assia Wevill
who had been subletting the Primrose Hill flat with her husband. Under a cloud of his affair, Hughes and Plath separated in the autumn of 1962 and she set up life in a new flat with the children.
published the poem "Arraignment", in which she openly accused Hughes of the battery and murder of Plath; other feminists threatened to kill him in Plath's name."Rhyme, reason and depression". (16 February 1993). The Guardian. Accessed 2010-07-09. In 1989, with Hughes under public attack, a battle raged in the letters pages of The Guardian
and The Independent
. In The Guardian on 20 April 1989 Hughes wrote the article "The Place Where Sylvia Plath Should Rest in Peace":
As Plath's widower, Hughes, controversially, became the executor of Plath’s personal and literary estates. He oversaw the publication of her manuscripts, including Ariel
(1966). Some critics were dissatisfied by his choice of poem order and omissions in the book and some feminists argued that Hughes had essentially driven her to suicide and therefore should not be responsible for her literary legacy. He claimed to have destroyed the final volume of Plath’s journal, detailing their last few months together. In his foreword to The Journals of Sylvia Plath, he defends his actions as a consideration for the couple's young children.
Following Plath's suicide, he wrote two poems "The Howling of Wolves" and "Song of a Rat" and then did not write poetry again for three years. He broadcast extensively, wrote critical essays and became involved in running international poetry festivals in the hopes of connecting English poetry with the rest of the world. In 1966, he wrote poems to accompany Leonard Baskin
's illustrations of crows, which became the epic narrative The Life and Songs of the Crow
, one of the works for which Hughes is best known.
On 25 March 1969, six years after Plath's suicide by asphyxiation from a gas stove, Assia Wevill committed suicide in the same way. Wevill also killed her child, Alexandra Tatiana Elise (nicknamed Shura), the four-year-old daughter of Hughes, born on 3 March 1965. Their deaths led to claims that Hughes had been abusive to both Plath and Wevill. In shock, Hughes could not finish the Crow sequence and remained unfinished until the work Cave Birds was published in 1975. Crow and the timing of its publication, seemed to underline Hughes's predisposition for dark violence, an example of the nature that he wrote about, red in tooth and claw. It did not help his cause.
, West Yorkshire
, and maintained the property at Court Green
. He began farming a small farm near Winkleigh
called Moortown, later to become embedded in the title of one of his poetry collections. He was later to become President of the charity Farms for City Children
, established by his friend Michael Morpurgo
in Iddesleigh
. In October 1970 Crow was published. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984, following Sir John Betjeman
. Hughes published many works for children and collaborated closely with Peter Brook
and the National Theatre Company.He dedicated himself to the Arvon Foundation
which promotes writing education, which runs residential writing courses at Hughes home at Lumb Bank, West Yorkshire.Bell, Charlie (2002) Ted Hughes Hodder and Stoughton p10
Hughes was appointed a member of the Order of Merit
by Queen Elizabeth II
just before he died. Hughes continued to live at the house in Devon, until his fatal myocardial infarction
in a Southwark
, London hospital on 28 October 1998, while undergoing treatment for colon cancer. His funeral was held on 3 November 1998, at North Tawton
church, and he was cremated in Exeter
. Speaking at the funeral, fellow poet Séamus Heaney
, said: "No death outside my immediate family has left me feeling more bereft. No death in my lifetime has hurt poets more. He was a tower of tenderness and strength, a great arch under which the least of poetry's children could enter and feel secure. His creative powers were, as Shakespeare said, still crescent. By his death, the veil of poetry is rent and the walls of learning broken."
Nicholas Hughes
, the son of Hughes and Plath, died by suicide in his home in Alaska on 16 March 2009 after battling depression.
(1970), which whilst it has been widely praised also divided critics, combining an apocalyptic, bitter, cynical and surreal view of the universe with what sometimes appeared simple, childlike verse.
In a 1971 interview with London Magazine, Hughes cited his main influences as including Blake
, Donne
, Hopkins
and Eliot
. He mentioned also Schopenhauer, Robert Graves
' book The White Goddess and The Tibetan Book of the Dead
.Bell (2002) p11
Hughes worked for 10 years on a prose poem, "Gaudete", which he hoped to have made into a film. It tells the story of the vicar of an English village who is carried off by elemental spirits, and replaced in the village by his enantiodromic
double, a changeling, fashioned from a log, who nevertheless has the same memories as the original vicar. The double is a force of nature who organises the women of the village into a "love coven" in order that he may father a new messiah. When the male members of the community discover what is going on, they murder him. The epilogue consists of a series of lyrics spoken by the restored priest in praise of a nature goddess, inspired by Robert Graves
's White Goddess. It was printed in 1977. Hughes was very interested in the relationship between his poetry and the book arts and many of his books were produced by notable presses and in collaborative editions with artists, for instance with Leonard Baskin
.
In addition to his own poetry, Hughes wrote a number of translations of European plays, mainly classical ones. HisTales from Ovid
(1997) contains a selection of free verse
translations from Ovid
's Metamorphoses. He also wrote both poetry and prose for children, one of his most successful books being The Iron Man, written to comfort his children after Sylvia Plath's suicide. It later became the basis of Pete Townshend
's rock opera
of the same name, and of the animated film The Iron Giant
.
Hughes was appointed as Poet Laureate
in 1984 following the death of John Betjeman
. It was later known that Hughes was second choice for the appointment. Philip Larkin
, the preferred nominee, had declined, because of ill health and writer's block. Hughes served in this position until his death in 1998.
In 1992, Hughes published Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, a monumental work inspired by Graves' The White Goddess
. In Birthday Letters
, his last collection, Hughes broke his silence on Plath, detailing aspects of their life together and his own behaviour at the time. The cover artwork was by their daughter Frieda
. Hughes' definitive 1,333-page Collected Poems (Faber & Faber) appeared (posthumously) in 2003. A poem discovered in October 2010, "Last letter", describes what happened during the three days leading up to Plath's suicide. It was published in New Statesman
on National Poetry Day, October 2010.
In 2011 several previously unpublished letters from Hughes to Craig Raine
were published in the literary review Areté
. They relate mainly to the process of editing Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, and also contain a sequence of drafts of letters in which Raine attempts to explain to Hughes his disinclination to publish Hughes' poem The Cast in an anthology he was editing, on the grounds that it might open Hughes to further attack on the subject of Sylvia Plath. "Dear Ted, Thanks for the poem. It is very interesting and would cause a minor sensation" (4 April 1997). The poem was eventually published in Birthday Letters and Hughes makes a passing reference to this then unpublished collection: "I have a whole pile of pieces that are all - one way or another - little bombs for the studious and earnest to throw at me" (5 April 1997).
in the same way that humans strive for ascendancy and success. Examples can be seen in the poems "Hawk Roosting" and "Jaguar".
The West Riding
dialect of Hughes' childhood remained a staple of his poetry, his lexicon lending a texture that is concrete, terse, emphatic, economical yet powerful. The manner of speech renders the hard facts of things and wards off self-indulgence.Sagar (1978) p7
Hughes' later work is deeply reliant upon myth and the British bard
ic tradition, heavily inflected with a modernist
, Jungian and ecological viewpoint. He re-worked classical and archetypal myth working with a conception of the dark sub-conscious.
to Hughes' memorial stone above the River Taw
, on Dartmoor
.
On 28 April 2011, a blue memorial plaque for Hughes was unveiled at North Tawton by his wife Carol. At Lumb Bridge near Pecket Well, Calderdale
is a plaque, installed by The Elmet Trust, commemorating Hughes' poem "Six Young Men", which was inspired by an old photograph of six young men taken at that spot. The photograph, taken just before the First World War, was of six young men who were all to soon lose their lives in the war A Ted Hughes Festival is held each year in Mytholmroyd, led by the Elmet Trust, an educational body founded to support the work and legacy of Hughes.
In 2010, it was announced that Hughes would be commemorated with a memorial in Poets' Corner
in Westminster Abbey
. The memorial stone will be Kirkstone green slate and will be placed at the foot of the memorial commemorating T. S. Eliot
. Readings will be given by poet Seamus Heaney
and actress Juliet Stevenson
, and also attending the ceremony will be Hughes' widow Carol Orchard and daughter Frieda. The ceremony will take place on 6 December 2011.
, Atlanta, Exeter University. The British Library also has a large collection comprising over 220 files containing manuscripts, letters, journals, personal diaries and correspondence. From 2010 the library archive will be accessible through the British Library
website.
Inspired by Hughes' Crow the German painter Johannes Heisig
created a large painting series in black and white which was presented to the public for the first time on the occasion of Berlin Museum Long Night in August 2011 at the SEZ Berlin
.
and Poetry Book Society
recommend a living UK poet who has completed the newest and most innovative work that year, "highlighting outstanding contributions made by poets to our cultural life." The £5,000 prize funded from the annual honorarium that Poet Laureate
Carol Ann Duffy
receives as Laureate from The Queen.Ted Hughes Award, hosted by the Poetry Society
Alice Oswald
was the inaugural winner in 2010 for her collection Weeds and Wildflowers (etchings by Jessica Greenman). In 2011 judges Gillian Clarke
, Stephen Raw and Jeanette Winterson
awarded the award to Kaite O’Reilly for her site specific retelling of Aeschylus
’ play, The Persians
(first produced in 472 BCE). Three other poets were shortlisted. Christopher Reid
worked with director Niall MacCormick
to adapt his narrative poem The Song of Lunch
into a 50-minute BBC2 film. David Swann's The Privilege of Rain (published by Waterloo Press, with wood-cuts by Clare Dunne), is a collection complied following a year as Writer in Residence at HMP Nottingham (prison). Katharine Towers' The Floating Man is a debut collection published by Picador.
Many of Ted Hughes' poems have been published as limited-edition broadsides
.
Order of Merit
The Order of Merit is a British dynastic order recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture...
(17 August 193028 October 1998), more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate
Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
The Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, also referred to as the Poet Laureate, is the Poet Laureate appointed by the monarch of the United Kingdom on the advice of the Prime Minister...
from 1984 until his death.
Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
, from 1956 until her death by suicide in 1963 at the age of 30. His part in the relationship became controversial to some feminists
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
and (particularly) American admirers of Plath. His last poetic work, Birthday Letters
Birthday Letters
Birthday Letters, published in 1998, is a collection of poetry by English poet and children's writer Ted Hughes. Released only months before Hughes's death, the collection won multiple prestigious literary awards...
(1998), explored their complex relationship. These poems make reference to Plath's suicide, but none of them addresses directly the circumstances of her death. A poem discovered in October 2010, Last letter, describes what happened during the three days leading up to Plath's suicide.
In 2008 The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
ranked Hughes fourth on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers
British literature
British Literature refers to literature associated with the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. By far the largest part of British literature is written in the English language, but there are bodies of written works in Latin, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Cornish, Manx, Jèrriais,...
since 1945".
Early life
Hughes was born on 17 August 1930 at 1 Aspinal Street, in MytholmroydMytholmroyd
Mytholmroyd is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale, in West Yorkshire, England. It lies east of Hebden Bridge and west of Halifax....
, West Riding of Yorkshire to William Henry and Edith (née Farrar) Hughes and raised among the local farms of the Calder valley
Calderdale
The Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale is a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, England, through which the upper part of the River Calder flows, and from which it takes its name...
and on the Pennine moorland. Hughes' sister Olwyn was two years his senior and his brother Gerald was older than him by ten years.Bell (2002) p4 His mother's family could trace their ancestry back to William de Ferrières, who came to England with William the Conqueror in the 11th century. Her own father had founded the religious community of Little Gidding
Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire
Little Gidding is a parish and small village in Huntingdonshire , England, near Sawtry and north west of Huntingdon.-History:The parish of Little Gidding is small, consisting of only 724 acres...
.Keith Sagar, "Hughes, Edward James (1930–1998)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 Most of the more recent generations of his family had worked in the clothing and milling industries in the area. Hughes's father, a joiner, had joined the Lancashire Fusiliers
Lancashire Fusiliers
The Lancashire Fusiliers was a British infantry regiment that was amalgamated with other Fusilier regiments in 1968 to form the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.- Formation and early history:...
and fought at Ypres. 30 000 had joined; nearly half were killed in action. A bullet narrowly escaped killing William Hughes when it lodged in a paybook in his breast pocket.He was one of just 17 men of his regiment to return from the Dardanelles Campaign (1915-6). The stories of Flanders fields
Western Front (World War I)
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...
filled Hughes' childhood imagination (later described in the poem "Out"). Hughes noted, "my first six years shaped everything."
Hughes loved hunting and fishing, swimming and picnicking with his family. He attended the Burnley Road School until he was seven his family moved to Mexborough
Mexborough
Mexborough is a town in the metropolitan borough of Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England, situated on the north bank of the River Don west of its confluence with the River Dearne...
, South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire is a metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It has a population of 1.29 million. It consists of four metropolitan boroughs: Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, and City of Sheffield...
, then attending Schofield Street junior school. His parents ran a newsagent's and tobacconist's shop. In Poetry in Making he recalled that he was fascinated by animals, collecting and drawing toy lead creatures. He acted as retriever when his elder brother gamekeeper shot magpies, owls, rats and curlews, growing up surrounded by the harsh realities of working farms in the valleys and on the moors.Sagar (1978), p6 During his time in Mexborough he explored Manor Farm at Old Denaby
Denaby
Denaby is a civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster in South Yorkshire, England. It has a population of 326, and contains the village of Old Denaby, it is also full of tramps and screbs....
, which he said he would come to know "better than any place on earth". His earliest poem "The Thought Fox", and earliest story "The Rain Horse" were recollections of the area. A close friend at the time, John Wholey, took Hughes to the Crookhill estate above Conisbrough where the boys spent great swathes of time. Hughes became close to the family and learnt a lot about wildlife from Wholey's father, a game keeper. He came to view fishing as an almost religious experience.
Hughes attended Mexborough Grammar School, where a succession of teachers encouraged him to write, and develop his interest in poetry. Teachers McLeod and Mayne introduced him to the poets Hopkins and Eliot. Hughes was mentored by his sister Olwyn, who was well versed in poetry, and his teacher John Fisher. Poet Harold Massingham
Harold Massingham
Harold W. Massingham was a British poet.-Life:He is the son of H. W. Massingham...
also attended this school and was also mentored by Fisher. In 1946 one of Hughes' early poems, "Wild West" and a short story were published in the grammar school magazine The Don and Dearne, followed by further poems in 1948. By 16 he had no other thought than being a poet.
During the same year Hughes won an open exhibition
Exhibition (scholarship)
-United Kingdom and Ireland:At the universities of Dublin, Oxford and Cambridge, and at Westminster School, Eton College and Winchester College, and various other UK educational establishments, an exhibition is a financial award or grant to an individual student, normally on grounds of merit. The...
in English at Pembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college has over seven hundred students and fellows, and is the third oldest college of the university. Physically, it is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from almost every century since its...
, but chose to do his National Service
National service
National service is a common name for mandatory government service programmes . The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes...
first. His two years of National Service (1949–51) passed comparatively easily. Hughes was stationed as a ground wireless mechanic in the RAF on an isolated three-man station in east Yorkshire, a time during which he had nothing to do but "read and reread Shakespeare and watch the grass grow". He learnt many of the plays by heart and memorised great quantities of Yeats
Yeats
W. B. Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright.Yeats may also refer to:* Yeats ,* Yeats , an impact crater on Mercury* Yeats , an Irish thoroughbred racehorse-See also:...
' poetry.
Career
In 1951, Hughes initially studied English at Pembroke CollegePembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college has over seven hundred students and fellows, and is the third oldest college of the university. Physically, it is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from almost every century since its...
under M. J. C. Hodhart, an authority on balladic forms. Hughes felt encouraged and supported by Hodhart's supervision, but attended few lectures and wrote no more poetry at this time, feeling stifled by literary academia and the "terrible, suffocating, maternal octopus" of literary tradition.Sagar (1978), p8 He wrote, "I might say, that I had as much talent for Leavis
F. R. Leavis
Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis CH was an influential British literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for nearly his entire career at Downing College, Cambridge.-Early life:...
-style dismantling of texts as anyone else, I even had a special bent for it, nearly a sadistic streak there, but it seemed to me not only a foolish game, but deeply destructive of myself." In his third year he transferred to anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
and archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
, both of which would later inform his poetry. He did not excel as a scholar.Bell (2002), p5 His first published poetry appeared in Chequer. A poem "The little boys and the seasons", written during this time, was published in Granta
Granta
Granta is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centers on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story’s supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make real." In 2007, The Observer stated, "In its blend of...
, under the pseudonym Daniel Hearing.Sagar (1978) p9
After university, living in London and Cambridge, Hughes went on to have many varied jobs including working as a rose gardener, a night watchman and a reader for the British film company J. Arthur Rank
Rank Organisation
The Rank Organisation was a British entertainment company formed during 1937 and absorbed in 1996 by The Rank Group Plc. It was the largest and most vertically-integrated film company in Britain, owning production, distribution and exhibition facilities....
. He also worked in a local zoo, a post that offered plentiful opportunities to observe animals at close quarters. On 26 February 1956, Hughes and his friends held a party to launch St. Botolph's Review
St. Botolph's Review
St Botolph's Review was the student-made poetry journal from Cambridge University, England in 1956, which saw the first publication of Ted Hughes' poetry, at the launch of which Hughes met Sylvia Plath. A copy of the original journal was stored in the British Library in 2010 . A second edition...
, which had a single issue. In it Hughes had four poems. At the party he met the American poet Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
, who was studying at Cambridge on a Fulbright Scholarship. She had already published extensively, having won various awards, and had come especially to meet Hughes and his fellow poet Lucas Myers. There was a great mutual attraction but they did not meet again for another month, when Plath was passing through London on her way to Paris. She visited him again on her return three weeks later.
Hughes and Plath dated and then were married at St George the Martyr Holborn
St George the Martyr Holborn
St George the Martyr Holborn is an Anglican church located at the south end of Queen Square, Holborn, London Borough of Camden. It is dedicated to Saint George, and is so-called to distinguish it from the later nearby church of St...
, on 16 June 1956, four months after they had first met. The date, Bloomsday
Bloomsday
Bloomsday is a commemoration observed annually on 16 June in Dublin and elsewhere to celebrate the life of Irish writer James Joyce and relive the events in his novel Ulysses, all of which took place on the same day in Dublin in 1904...
was purposely chosen in honour of James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
.Plath's mother was the only wedding guest and she accompanied them on their honeymoon to Benidorm
Benidorm
Benidorm is a coastal town and municipality located in the comarca of Marina Baixa, in the province of Alicante, Valencian community, Spain, by the Western Mediterranean....
on the Spanish coast.Bell (2002), p6 Hughes's biographers note that Plath did not relate her history of depression and suicide to him until much later.Reflecting later in Birthday Letters, Hughes commented that early on he could see chasms of difference between himself and Plath, but that in the first years of their marriage they both felt happy and supported, avidly pursuing their writing careers. On returning to Cambridge, they lived at 55 Eltisley Avenue. That year they each had poems published in The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, Poetry
Poetry (magazine)
Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...
and The Atlantic.Sagar (1978), p11 Plath typed up Hughes' manuscript for his collection Hawk In The Rain which went on to win a poetry competition run by the Poetry centre of the Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association of New York
Jewish Community Center
A Jewish Community Center or Jewish Community Centre is a general recreational, social and fraternal organization serving the Jewish community in a number of cities...
. The first prize was publication by Harper
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
and Hughes garnered widespread critical acclaim with the book's release in September 1957, winning a Somerset Maugham Award
Somerset Maugham Award
The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to whom they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus...
. The work favoured hard hitting trochee
Trochee
A trochee or choree, choreus, is a metrical foot used in formal poetry consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one...
s and spondee
Spondee
In poetry, a spondee is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables, as determined by syllable weight in classical meters, or two stressed syllables, as determined by stress in modern meters...
s reminiscent of middle English over gentile latinate sounds; a style he used throughout his career.
The couple moved to America so that Plath could take a teaching position at her alma mater, Smith College
Smith College
Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...
; during this time Hughes taught at the University of Massachusetts
University of Massachusetts
This article relates to the statewide university system. For the flagship campus often referred to as "UMass", see University of Massachusetts Amherst...
, Amherst. In 1958 they met Leonard Baskin
Leonard Baskin
Leonard Baskin was an American sculptor, book-illustrator, wood-engraver, printmaker, graphic artist, writer and teacher.-Life and work:...
who would later illustrate many of Hughes' books, including Crow.The couple returned to England, staying for a short while back in Heptonstall
Heptonstall
Heptonstall is a small village and civil parish within the Calderdale borough of West Yorkshire, England. The population of Heptonstall, including the hamlets of Colden and Slack, is 1,448. The town of Hebden Bridge lies directly to the southeast...
and then finding a small flat in Primrose Hill
Primrose Hill
Primrose Hill is a hill of located on the north side of Regent's Park in London, England, and also the name for the surrounding district. The hill has a clear view of central London to the south-east, as well as Belsize Park and Hampstead to the north...
, London. They were both writing, Hughes working on programmes for the BBC as well as producing essays, articles, reviews and talks.Bell, Charlie (2002) Ted Hughes Hodder and Stoughton, p7 During this time he wrote the poems that would be published in Wodwo (1967) and Recklings (1966). In March 1960 Lupercal came out and won the Hawthornden Prize
Hawthornden Prize
The Hawthornden Prize is a British literary award that was established in 1919 by Alice Warrender. Authors are awarded on the quality of their "imaginative literature" which can be written in either poetry or prose...
. He found he was being label as the poet of the wild, writing only about animals. He began to seriously explore myth and esoteric practices within as shamanism, Buddhism and alchemy, perceiving that that imagination could heal dualistic splits in the human psyche and poetry was the language of the work.
Hughes and Plath had two children, Frieda Rebecca
Frieda Hughes
Frieda Rebecca Hughes is an English poet and painter. She has published seven children's books and four poetry collections and has had many exhibitions.-Early life:...
(1960) and Nicholas Farrar
Nicholas Hughes
Nicholas Farrar Hughes was a fisheries biologist known as an expert in stream salmonid ecology. Hughes was the son of the American poet Sylvia Plath and English poet Ted Hughes and the younger brother of English artist and poet Frieda Hughes...
(1962) and in 1961, bought the house Court Green
Court Green
Court Green in North Tawton, Devon, England, was the home the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath moved to in 1961. Plath left the house in December 1962, while Hughes lived there on and off for the rest of his life.- Sylvia Plath at Court Green :...
, in North Tawton
North Tawton
North Tawton is a small town in Devon, England, situated on the river Taw.-History:The Romans crossed the River Taw at what is now Newland Mill, a little outside the present town, and established a succession of military camps there over the years...
, Devon
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
. In the summer of 1962 Hughes began an affair with Assia Wevill
Assia Wevill
Assia Wevill was a German-born woman who escaped the Nazis, lived in British Palestine and later in Britain, and is best known for her relationship with the English poet Ted Hughes. She killed herself and also her four-year-old daughter Alexandra Tatiana Elise . Six years earlier, Hughes's wife...
who had been subletting the Primrose Hill flat with her husband. Under a cloud of his affair, Hughes and Plath separated in the autumn of 1962 and she set up life in a new flat with the children.
The death of Plath
Beset by depression, and with a history of suicide attempts, Plath took her own life on 11 February 1963, although it is unclear whether she meant to ultimately succeed.Bell, Charlie (2002) Ted Hughes Hodder and Stoughton p8 Hughes was devastated. In a letter to an old friend of Plath's from Smith College, he wrote, "That's the end of my life. The rest is posthumous." Some feminists argued that Hughes had driven Plath to suicide. Plath's gravestone was repeatedly vandalized by those aggrieved that "Hughes" is written on the stone and attempted to chisel it off, leaving only the name "Sylvia Plath."Badia, Janet and Jennifer Phegle. (2005). Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present. University of Toronto Press. p252 ISBN 0802089283. In 1970, radical feminist poet Robin MorganRobin Morgan
Robin Morgan is a former child actor turned American radical feminist activist, writer, poet, and editor of Sisterhood is Powerful and Ms. Magazine....
published the poem "Arraignment", in which she openly accused Hughes of the battery and murder of Plath; other feminists threatened to kill him in Plath's name."Rhyme, reason and depression". (16 February 1993). The Guardian. Accessed 2010-07-09. In 1989, with Hughes under public attack, a battle raged in the letters pages of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
. In The Guardian on 20 April 1989 Hughes wrote the article "The Place Where Sylvia Plath Should Rest in Peace":
In the years soon after [Plath's] death, when scholars approached me, I tried to take their apparently serious concern for the truth about Sylvia Plath seriously. But I learned my lesson early... If I tried too hard to tell them exactly how something happened, in the hope of correcting some fantasy, I was quite likely to be accused of trying to suppress Free Speech. In general, my refusal to have anything to do with the Plath Fantasia has been regarded as an attempt to suppress Free Speech...The Fantasia about Sylvia Plath is more needed than the facts. Where that leaves respect for the truth of her life (and of mine), or for her memory, or for the literary tradition, I do not know.
As Plath's widower, Hughes, controversially, became the executor of Plath’s personal and literary estates. He oversaw the publication of her manuscripts, including Ariel
Ariel (Plath)
Ariel was the second book of Sylvia Plath's poetry to be published, and was originally published in 1965, two years after her death by suicide. The poems in the 1965 edition of Ariel, with their free flowing images and characteristically menacing psychic landscapes, marked a dramatic turn from...
(1966). Some critics were dissatisfied by his choice of poem order and omissions in the book and some feminists argued that Hughes had essentially driven her to suicide and therefore should not be responsible for her literary legacy. He claimed to have destroyed the final volume of Plath’s journal, detailing their last few months together. In his foreword to The Journals of Sylvia Plath, he defends his actions as a consideration for the couple's young children.
Following Plath's suicide, he wrote two poems "The Howling of Wolves" and "Song of a Rat" and then did not write poetry again for three years. He broadcast extensively, wrote critical essays and became involved in running international poetry festivals in the hopes of connecting English poetry with the rest of the world. In 1966, he wrote poems to accompany Leonard Baskin
Leonard Baskin
Leonard Baskin was an American sculptor, book-illustrator, wood-engraver, printmaker, graphic artist, writer and teacher.-Life and work:...
's illustrations of crows, which became the epic narrative The Life and Songs of the Crow
Crow (poetry)
Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow is a literary work by Ted Hughes and one of Hughes' most important works.It is a collection of poems based around the character Crow, which borrow extensively from many world mythologies, notably Christian mythology...
, one of the works for which Hughes is best known.
On 25 March 1969, six years after Plath's suicide by asphyxiation from a gas stove, Assia Wevill committed suicide in the same way. Wevill also killed her child, Alexandra Tatiana Elise (nicknamed Shura), the four-year-old daughter of Hughes, born on 3 March 1965. Their deaths led to claims that Hughes had been abusive to both Plath and Wevill. In shock, Hughes could not finish the Crow sequence and remained unfinished until the work Cave Birds was published in 1975. Crow and the timing of its publication, seemed to underline Hughes's predisposition for dark violence, an example of the nature that he wrote about, red in tooth and claw. It did not help his cause.
1970-1998
In August 1970 Hughes married Carol Orchard, a nurse, and they remained together until his death. He bought the house Lumb Bank near Hebden BridgeHebden Bridge
Hebden Bridge is a market town within the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale, in West Yorkshire, England. It forms part of the Upper Calder Valley and lies 8 miles west of Halifax and 14 miles north east of Rochdale, at the confluence of the River Calder and the River Hebden .A 2004 profile of...
, West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....
, and maintained the property at Court Green
Court Green
Court Green in North Tawton, Devon, England, was the home the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath moved to in 1961. Plath left the house in December 1962, while Hughes lived there on and off for the rest of his life.- Sylvia Plath at Court Green :...
. He began farming a small farm near Winkleigh
Winkleigh
Winkleigh is a small village in Devon, England. It is best known outside Devon as the birthplace of Inch's Cider. Inch's Cider was bought by Bulmer's, who then closed the plant down...
called Moortown, later to become embedded in the title of one of his poetry collections. He was later to become President of the charity Farms for City Children
Farms for City Children
Farms for City Children is a UK registered charity which aims to provide experience of farm and countryside life for inner-city children.-Foundation:...
, established by his friend Michael Morpurgo
Michael Morpurgo
Michael Morpurgo, OBE FKC AKC is an English author, poet, playwright and librettist, best known for his work in children's literature. He was the third Children's Laureate.-Early life:...
in Iddesleigh
Iddesleigh
Iddesleigh is a village in Devon, England....
. In October 1970 Crow was published. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984, following Sir John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
. Hughes published many works for children and collaborated closely with Peter Brook
Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...
and the National Theatre Company.He dedicated himself to the Arvon Foundation
Arvon Foundation
The Arvon Foundation is a charitable organisation in the United Kingdom which promotes creative writing. It is based in the Free Word Centre for literature, literacy and free expression in London.-History:...
which promotes writing education, which runs residential writing courses at Hughes home at Lumb Bank, West Yorkshire.Bell, Charlie (2002) Ted Hughes Hodder and Stoughton p10
Hughes was appointed a member of the Order of Merit
Order of Merit
The Order of Merit is a British dynastic order recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture...
by Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
just before he died. Hughes continued to live at the house in Devon, until his fatal myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
in a Southwark
London Borough of Southwark
The London Borough of Southwark is a London borough in south east London, England. It is directly south of the River Thames and the City of London, and forms part of Inner London.-History:...
, London hospital on 28 October 1998, while undergoing treatment for colon cancer. His funeral was held on 3 November 1998, at North Tawton
North Tawton
North Tawton is a small town in Devon, England, situated on the river Taw.-History:The Romans crossed the River Taw at what is now Newland Mill, a little outside the present town, and established a succession of military camps there over the years...
church, and he was cremated in Exeter
Exeter
Exeter is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the...
. Speaking at the funeral, fellow poet Séamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
, said: "No death outside my immediate family has left me feeling more bereft. No death in my lifetime has hurt poets more. He was a tower of tenderness and strength, a great arch under which the least of poetry's children could enter and feel secure. His creative powers were, as Shakespeare said, still crescent. By his death, the veil of poetry is rent and the walls of learning broken."
Nicholas Hughes
Nicholas Hughes
Nicholas Farrar Hughes was a fisheries biologist known as an expert in stream salmonid ecology. Hughes was the son of the American poet Sylvia Plath and English poet Ted Hughes and the younger brother of English artist and poet Frieda Hughes...
, the son of Hughes and Plath, died by suicide in his home in Alaska on 16 March 2009 after battling depression.
Work
Hughes' first collection, Hawk in the Rain (1957) attracted considerable critical acclaim. In 1959 he won the Galbraith prize which brought $5,000. His most significant work is perhaps CrowCrow (poetry)
Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow is a literary work by Ted Hughes and one of Hughes' most important works.It is a collection of poems based around the character Crow, which borrow extensively from many world mythologies, notably Christian mythology...
(1970), which whilst it has been widely praised also divided critics, combining an apocalyptic, bitter, cynical and surreal view of the universe with what sometimes appeared simple, childlike verse.
In a 1971 interview with London Magazine, Hughes cited his main influences as including Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
, Donne
John Donne
John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...
, Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous 20th-century fame established him among the leading Victorian poets...
and Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
. He mentioned also Schopenhauer, Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
' book The White Goddess and The Tibetan Book of the Dead
Bardo Thodol
The Liberation Through Hearing During The Intermediate State , sometimes translated as Liberation Through Hearing or Bardo Thodol is a funerary text...
.Bell (2002) p11
Hughes worked for 10 years on a prose poem, "Gaudete", which he hoped to have made into a film. It tells the story of the vicar of an English village who is carried off by elemental spirits, and replaced in the village by his enantiodromic
Enantiodromia
Enantiodromia is a principle introduced by psychiatrist Carl Jung that the superabundance of any force inevitably produces its opposite...
double, a changeling, fashioned from a log, who nevertheless has the same memories as the original vicar. The double is a force of nature who organises the women of the village into a "love coven" in order that he may father a new messiah. When the male members of the community discover what is going on, they murder him. The epilogue consists of a series of lyrics spoken by the restored priest in praise of a nature goddess, inspired by Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
's White Goddess. It was printed in 1977. Hughes was very interested in the relationship between his poetry and the book arts and many of his books were produced by notable presses and in collaborative editions with artists, for instance with Leonard Baskin
Leonard Baskin
Leonard Baskin was an American sculptor, book-illustrator, wood-engraver, printmaker, graphic artist, writer and teacher.-Life and work:...
.
In addition to his own poetry, Hughes wrote a number of translations of European plays, mainly classical ones. HisTales from Ovid
Tales from Ovid
Tales from Ovid is a poetical work written by the English poet Ted Hughes. Published in 1997 by Faber and Faber, it is a retelling of twenty-four tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses. It won the Whitbread Book Of The Year Award for 1997 and has been translated into several languages. It was one of his...
(1997) contains a selection of free verse
Free verse
Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...
translations from Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
's Metamorphoses. He also wrote both poetry and prose for children, one of his most successful books being The Iron Man, written to comfort his children after Sylvia Plath's suicide. It later became the basis of Pete Townshend
Pete Townshend
Peter Dennis Blandford "Pete" Townshend is an English rock guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and author, known principally as the guitarist and songwriter for the rock group The Who, as well as for his own solo career...
's rock opera
Rock opera
A rock opera is a work of rock music that presents a storyline told over multiple parts, songs or sections in the manner of opera. A rock opera differs from a conventional rock album, which usually includes songs that are not unified by a common theme or narrative. More recent developments include...
of the same name, and of the animated film The Iron Giant
The Iron Giant
The Iron Giant is a 1999 animated film produced by Warner Bros. Animation, based on the 1968 novel The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. Brad Bird directed the film, which stars a voice cast of Jennifer Aniston, Harry Connick, Jr., Vin Diesel, Eli Marienthal, Christopher McDonald and John Mahoney...
.
Hughes was appointed as Poet Laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
in 1984 following the death of John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
. It was later known that Hughes was second choice for the appointment. Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin
Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is widely regarded as one of the great English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century...
, the preferred nominee, had declined, because of ill health and writer's block. Hughes served in this position until his death in 1998.
In 1992, Hughes published Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, a monumental work inspired by Graves' The White Goddess
The White Goddess
The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth is a book-length essay on the nature of poetic myth-making by author and poet Robert Graves. First published in 1948, based on earlier articles published in Wales magazine, corrected, revised and enlarged editions appeared in 1948, 1952 and 1961...
. In Birthday Letters
Birthday Letters
Birthday Letters, published in 1998, is a collection of poetry by English poet and children's writer Ted Hughes. Released only months before Hughes's death, the collection won multiple prestigious literary awards...
, his last collection, Hughes broke his silence on Plath, detailing aspects of their life together and his own behaviour at the time. The cover artwork was by their daughter Frieda
Frieda Hughes
Frieda Rebecca Hughes is an English poet and painter. She has published seven children's books and four poetry collections and has had many exhibitions.-Early life:...
. Hughes' definitive 1,333-page Collected Poems (Faber & Faber) appeared (posthumously) in 2003. A poem discovered in October 2010, "Last letter", describes what happened during the three days leading up to Plath's suicide. It was published in New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
on National Poetry Day, October 2010.
In 2011 several previously unpublished letters from Hughes to Craig Raine
Craig Raine
Craig Raine is an English poet and critic born in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, England. Along with Christopher Reid, he is the best-known exponent of Martian poetry.-Life:...
were published in the literary review Areté
Areté
Areté is an arts magazine, published three times a year, edited by the poet Craig Raine. The magazine aims to give detailed coverage of theatre, fiction, and poetry, while also serving as a platform for new writing in all genres....
. They relate mainly to the process of editing Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, and also contain a sequence of drafts of letters in which Raine attempts to explain to Hughes his disinclination to publish Hughes' poem The Cast in an anthology he was editing, on the grounds that it might open Hughes to further attack on the subject of Sylvia Plath. "Dear Ted, Thanks for the poem. It is very interesting and would cause a minor sensation" (4 April 1997). The poem was eventually published in Birthday Letters and Hughes makes a passing reference to this then unpublished collection: "I have a whole pile of pieces that are all - one way or another - little bombs for the studious and earnest to throw at me" (5 April 1997).
Themes
Hughes' earlier poetic work is rooted in nature and, in particular, the innocent savagery of animals, an interest from an early age. He wrote frequently of the mixture of beauty and violence in the natural world.Bell (2002) p1 Animals serve as a metaphor for his view on life: animals live out a struggle for the survival of the fittestSurvival of the fittest
"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase originating in evolutionary theory, as an alternative description of Natural selection. The phrase is today commonly used in contexts that are incompatible with the original meaning as intended by its first two proponents: British polymath philosopher Herbert...
in the same way that humans strive for ascendancy and success. Examples can be seen in the poems "Hawk Roosting" and "Jaguar".
The West Riding
West Riding
West Riding could refer to:Areas:*West Riding of Yorkshire, England*West Riding of Lindsey in Lincolnshire, England*West Riding of County Cork, Ireland*West Riding of County Galway, IrelandTransport companies:*West Riding Automobile Company...
dialect of Hughes' childhood remained a staple of his poetry, his lexicon lending a texture that is concrete, terse, emphatic, economical yet powerful. The manner of speech renders the hard facts of things and wards off self-indulgence.Sagar (1978) p7
Hughes' later work is deeply reliant upon myth and the British bard
Bard
In medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, employed by a patron, such as a monarch or nobleman, to commemorate the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities.Originally a specific class of poet, contrasting with another class known as fili in Ireland...
ic tradition, heavily inflected with a modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
, Jungian and ecological viewpoint. He re-worked classical and archetypal myth working with a conception of the dark sub-conscious.
Commemoration and legacy
A memorial walk was inaugurated in 2005, leading from the Devon village of BelstoneBelstone
Belstone is a village in Devon, England best known for the Nine Maidens stone circle. It lies within the West Devon local government district....
to Hughes' memorial stone above the River Taw
River Taw
The River Taw rises at Taw Head, a spring on the central northern flanks of Dartmoor. It reaches the Bristol Channel away on the north coast of Devon at a joint estuary mouth which it shares with the River Torridge.-Watercourse:...
, on Dartmoor
Dartmoor
Dartmoor is an area of moorland in south Devon, England. Protected by National Park status, it covers .The granite upland dates from the Carboniferous period of geological history. The moorland is capped with many exposed granite hilltops known as tors, providing habitats for Dartmoor wildlife. The...
.
On 28 April 2011, a blue memorial plaque for Hughes was unveiled at North Tawton by his wife Carol. At Lumb Bridge near Pecket Well, Calderdale
Calderdale
The Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale is a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, England, through which the upper part of the River Calder flows, and from which it takes its name...
is a plaque, installed by The Elmet Trust, commemorating Hughes' poem "Six Young Men", which was inspired by an old photograph of six young men taken at that spot. The photograph, taken just before the First World War, was of six young men who were all to soon lose their lives in the war A Ted Hughes Festival is held each year in Mytholmroyd, led by the Elmet Trust, an educational body founded to support the work and legacy of Hughes.
In 2010, it was announced that Hughes would be commemorated with a memorial in Poets' Corner
Poets' Corner
Poets' Corner is the name traditionally given to a section of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey because of the number of poets, playwrights, and writers buried and commemorated there. The most recent additions were a memorial floor stone unveiled in 2009 for the founders of the Royal Ballet...
in Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
. The memorial stone will be Kirkstone green slate and will be placed at the foot of the memorial commemorating T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
. Readings will be given by poet Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
and actress Juliet Stevenson
Juliet Stevenson
Juliet Anne Virginia Stevenson, CBE is an English actor of stage and screen.- Early life :Stevenson was born in Kelvedon, Essex, England, the daughter of Virginia Ruth , a teacher, and Michael Guy Stevenson, an army officer. Stevenson's father was in the army and was posted to a new place every...
, and also attending the ceremony will be Hughes' widow Carol Orchard and daughter Frieda. The ceremony will take place on 6 December 2011.
Archive
Hughes archival material is held by institutions such as Emory UniversityEmory University
Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...
, Atlanta, Exeter University. The British Library also has a large collection comprising over 220 files containing manuscripts, letters, journals, personal diaries and correspondence. From 2010 the library archive will be accessible through the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
website.
Inspired by Hughes' Crow the German painter Johannes Heisig
Johannes Heisig
Johannes Heisig is a German painter and graphic artist. His work combines the tradition of German socialist realism with a subjective expressionism...
created a large painting series in black and white which was presented to the public for the first time on the occasion of Berlin Museum Long Night in August 2011 at the SEZ Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
.
Ted Hughes Award
In 2009 the Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry was established with the permission of Carol Hughes. The Poetry Society notes "the award is named in honour of Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, and one of the greatest twentieth century poets for both children and adults”. Members of the Poetry SocietyPoetry Society
The Poetry Society is a membership organisation, open to all, whose stated aim is "to promote the study, use and enjoyment of poetry".The Society was founded in London in February 1909 as the Poetry Recital Society, becoming the Poetry Society in 1912...
and Poetry Book Society
Poetry Book Society
The Poetry Book Society was founded by T. S. Eliot and friends in 1953. Each quarter the Society selects one recently published collection of poetry for its members. The Society also publishes the quarterly poetry journal Bulletin, and it administers the competition for the annual T. S. Eliot Prize...
recommend a living UK poet who has completed the newest and most innovative work that year, "highlighting outstanding contributions made by poets to our cultural life." The £5,000 prize funded from the annual honorarium that Poet Laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's poet laureate in May 2009...
receives as Laureate from The Queen.Ted Hughes Award, hosted by the Poetry Society
Alice Oswald
Alice Oswald
-Career:Oswald read Classics at New College, Oxford, has worked as a gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden, and today lives with her husband, the playwright Peter Oswald , and her three children in Devon, in the South-West of England....
was the inaugural winner in 2010 for her collection Weeds and Wildflowers (etchings by Jessica Greenman). In 2011 judges Gillian Clarke
Gillian Clarke
Gillian Clarke is a Welsh poet, playwright, editor, broadcaster, lecturer and translator from Welsh.-Life:Clarke was born in Cardiff and brought up in Cardiff and Penarth, though for part of the Second World War she was in Pembrokeshire...
, Stephen Raw and Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson OBE is a British novelist.-Early years:Winterson was born in Manchester and adopted on 21 January 1960. She was raised in Accrington, Lancashire, by Constance and John William Winterson...
awarded the award to Kaite O’Reilly for her site specific retelling of Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
’ play, The Persians
The Persians
The Persians is an Athenian tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus. First produced in 472 BCE, it is the oldest surviving play in the history of theatre...
(first produced in 472 BCE). Three other poets were shortlisted. Christopher Reid
Christopher Reid
Christopher Reid is a Hong Kong-born British poet, essayist, cartoonist, and writer. He has been nominated twice for the Whitbread Awards in 1996 and in 1997. A contemporary of Martin Amis, he was educated at Exeter College, Oxford. He is one of the exponents of Martian poetry which employs...
worked with director Niall MacCormick
Niall MacCormick
Niall MacCormick is a British film and television director.-External links:...
to adapt his narrative poem The Song of Lunch
The Song of Lunch
The Song of Lunch is a 2010 television adaptation of Christopher Reid's poem of the same name., 30 June 2010 It was directed by Niall MacCormick and stars Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson...
into a 50-minute BBC2 film. David Swann's The Privilege of Rain (published by Waterloo Press, with wood-cuts by Clare Dunne), is a collection complied following a year as Writer in Residence at HMP Nottingham (prison). Katharine Towers' The Floating Man is a debut collection published by Picador.
Poetry collections
- 1957 The Hawk in the RainThe Hawk in the RainThe Hawk in the Rain is a collection of poems by the British poet Ted Hughes. Published in 1957, it was Hughes's first book of poetry. The book received immediate acclaim in both England and America, where it won the Galbraith Prize. Many of the book's poems imagine the real and symbolic lives of...
- 1960 Lupercal
- 1967 Wodwo
- 1970 Crow: From the Life and the Songs of the CrowCrow (poetry)Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow is a literary work by Ted Hughes and one of Hughes' most important works.It is a collection of poems based around the character Crow, which borrow extensively from many world mythologies, notably Christian mythology...
- 1972 Selected Poems 1957-1967
- 1975 Cave Birds
- 1977 Gaudete
- 1979 Remains of Elmet' (with photographs by Fay GodwinFay GodwinFay Godwin was a noted British photographer, most widely known for her black-and-white landscapes of the British countryside and coast.-Career:Through her husband, Godwin was introduced to the London literary scene...
) - 1979 MoortownMoortown DiaryMoortown Diary, sometimes just known as Moortown, is a poetry diary which details the everyday life of a working farm, first published in 1979. The author, poet Ted Hughes, married Carol Orchard, a farmer's daughter, in 1970. Ted and his father-in-law, Jack Orchard, ran Moortown farm near...
- 1983 River
- 1986 Flowers and Insects
- 1989 WolfwatchingWolfwatchingWolfwatching is a book of poems by former English Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, his fourteenth. It was first published in London by Faber and Faber in 1989.Its dedication reads "For Hilda", and it contains twenty-one poems:* "A Sparrow Hawk"...
- 1992 Rain-charm for the Duchy
- 1994 New Selected Poems 1957-1994
- 1997 Tales from OvidTales from OvidTales from Ovid is a poetical work written by the English poet Ted Hughes. Published in 1997 by Faber and Faber, it is a retelling of twenty-four tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses. It won the Whitbread Book Of The Year Award for 1997 and has been translated into several languages. It was one of his...
- 1998 Birthday LettersBirthday LettersBirthday Letters, published in 1998, is a collection of poetry by English poet and children's writer Ted Hughes. Released only months before Hughes's death, the collection won multiple prestigious literary awards...
— winner of the 1998 Forward Poetry PrizeForward Poetry PrizeThe Forward Poetry Prizes were created in 1991. The aim of the prizes is to extend the audience for contemporary poetry. Until the T.S. Eliot Prize remuneration was increased to £15,000 plus £1000 to each of nine runners-up, the Forward was the United Kingdom's most valuable annual poetry...
for best collection, the 1998 T. S. Eliot PrizeT. S. Eliot PrizeThe T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is awarded by the Poetry Book Society to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Prize was inaugurated in 1993 in celebration of the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and in...
, and the 1999 British Book of the Year award. - 2003 Collected Poems
Volumes of translation
- Spring Awakening by Frank WedekindFrank WedekindBenjamin Franklin Wedekind , usually known as Frank Wedekind, was a German playwright...
- Blood Wedding by Federico García LorcaFederico García LorcaFederico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...
- 1977 Amen by Yehuda Amichai, Amen, Harper (New York, NY)
- 1968 Yehuda Amichai, Selected Poems Cape Goliard Press (London, England), revised edition published as Poems, Harper (New York, NY), 1969.
- 1997 Tales from Ovid by OvidOvidPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (New York, NY) - 1999 The Oresteia by AeschylusAeschylusAeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (New York, NY) - 1999 PhèdrePhèdrePhèdre is a dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677.-Composition and premiere:...
by Jean RacineJean RacineJean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...
, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (New York, NY), - 1999 Alcestis by EuripidesEuripidesEuripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...
, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (New York, NY)
Anthologies edited by Hughes
- Selected Poems of Emily DickinsonEmily DickinsonEmily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...
- Selected Poems of Sylvia PlathSylvia PlathSylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
- Selected Verse of ShakespeareWilliam ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
- A Choice of ColeridgeSamuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
's Verse - The Rattle Bag (edited with Séamus HeaneySeamus HeaneySeamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
) - The School Bag (edited with Séamus Heaney)
- By Heart: 101 Poems to Remember
Short story collection
- 1995 The Dreamfighter, and Other Creation Tales. Faber and Faber (London, England)
- 1995 Difficulties of a Bridegroom: Collected Short Stories. Picador (New York, NY)
Prose
- 1967 "Poetry Is," Doubleday (New York)
- 1967 Poetry in the Making: An Anthology of Poems and Programmes from "Listening and Writing. Faber (London) 1967.
- 1992 Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (New York)
- 1993 A Dancer to God Tributes to T. S. Eliot. (Editor) Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (New York)
- 1994 Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose. (Essay collection) . Edited by William Scammell, Faber (London). Picador USA (New York) 1995.
Books for children
- The Earth Owl and Other Moon People (1960)
- Meet my Folks! (1961)
- How the Whale Became (1963)
- Nessie the Mannerless Monster (1964)
- The Iron Man (1968)
- Coming of the Kings and Other Plays (1970)
- Season Songs (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin, published 1976)
- Moon-Whales and Other Moon Poems (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin,published 1976)
- Moon-Bells and Other Poems (Illustrated by Felicity Roma Bowers,published 1978)
- Under the North Star (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin,published 1981)
- Ffangs the Vampire Bat and the Kiss of Truth (Illustrated by Chris Riddell,published 1986)
- Tales of the Early World (Illustrated by Andrew Davidson published 1988)
- The Iron WomanThe Iron WomanThe Iron Woman is the 1993 sequel to the popular Ted Hughes novel The Iron Man."The Iron Woman has come to take revenge on mankind for its thoughtless polluting of the seas, lakes and rivers" - introduction to the novel....
( 1993) - Collected Animal Poems: Vols. 1–4
- The Mermaid's Purse (Illustrated by R.J. Lloyd, published by Sunstone Press, 1993)
- The Cat and the Cuckoo (Illustrated by R. J. Lloyd, published 1987)
Plays
- The House of Aries (radio play), broadcast, 1960.
- The Calm produced in Boston, MA, 1961.
- A Houseful of Women (radio play), broadcast, 1961.
- The Wound (radio play; also see below), broadcast, 1962
- Difficulties of a Bridegroom (radio play), broadcast, 1963.
- Epithalamium produced in London, 1963.
- Dogs (radio play), broadcast, 1964.
- The House of Donkeys (radio play), broadcast, 1965.
- The Head of Gold (radio play), broadcast, 1967.
- The Coming of the Kings and Other Plays (juvenile)
- The Price of a Bride (juvenile; radio play), broadcast, 1966.
- Adapted SenecaSeneca the YoungerLucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
's Oedipus (produced in London 1968) - Orghast produced in Persepolis, Iran, 1971.
- Eat Crow Rainbow Press (London, England), 1971.
- The Iron Man (based on his juvenile book; televised, 1972).
- Orpheus 1973.
Limited editions
- The Burning of the Brothel (Turret Books, 1966)
- Recklings (Turret Books, 1967)
- Scapegoats and Rabies (Poet & Printer, 1967)
- Animal Poems (Richard Gilbertson, 1967)
- A Crow Hymn (Sceptre Press, 1970)
- The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar (Richard Gilbertson, 1970)
- Crow Wakes (Poet & Printer, 1971)
- Shakespeare's Poem (Lexham Press, 1971)
- Eat Crow (Rainbow Press, 1971)
- Prometheus on His Crag (Rainbow Press, 1973)
- Crow: From the Life and the Songs of the Crow (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin, published by Faber & Faber, 1973)
- Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter (Rainbow Press,1974)
- Cave Birds (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin, published by Scolar Press, 1975)
- Earth-Moon (Illustrated by Ted Hughes, published by Rainbow Press, 1976)
- Eclipse (Sceptre Press, 1976)
- Sunstruck (Sceptre Press, 1977)
- A Solstice (Sceptre Press, 1978)
- Orts (Rainbow Press, 1978)
- Moortown Elegies (Rainbow Press, 1978)
- The Threshold (Illustrated by Ralph Steadman, published by Steam Press, 1979)
- Adam and the Sacred Nine (Rainbow Press, 1979)
- Four Tales Told by an Idiot (Sceptre Press, 1979)
- The Cat and the Cuckoo (Illustrated by R.J. Lloyd, published by Sunstone Press, 1987)
- A Primer of Birds: Poems (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin, published by Gehenna Press, 1989)
- Capriccio (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin, published by Gehenna Press, 1990)
- The Mermaid's Purse (Illustrated by R.J. Lloyd, published by Sunstone Press, 1993)
- Howls and Whispers (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin, published by Gehenna Press, 1998)
Many of Ted Hughes' poems have been published as limited-edition broadsides
Broadside (printing)
A broadside is a large sheet of paper printed on one side only. Historically, broadsides were posters, announcing events or proclamations, or simply advertisements...
.
Sources
- Ted Hughes by Charlie Bell. Hodder and Stoughton 2002
- The Epic Poise: a celebration of Ted Hughes, edited by Nick Gammage, Faber and Faber, 1999.
- Ted Hughes: the life of a poet, by Elaine Feinstein, W. W. Norton, 2001.
- Bound to Please, by Michael Dirda pp 17–21, W. W. Norton, 2005.
- Ted Hughes: a literary life, by Neil Roberts, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
- The art of Ted Hughes by Keith Sagar Cambridge University Press. 1978
- The Elegies of Ted Hughes by Edward Hadley, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Profiles
- Poems and profile at the Poetry Archive. Retrieved 2010-08-13.
- Poems and poetry at the Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2010-08-13
- Poems and profile at Poets.org
- Hughes referenced timeline. Ann Skea
- The Elmet Trust. Official Ted Hughes website. Retrieved: 2010-02-22
- Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, London
- The Ted Hughes Society Journal
Archive
- British Library - modern British Collections on Ted Hughes. Retrieved: 2010-02-22
- Ted Hughes archive at Emory University. Retrieved: 2010-02-22
- Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath collection at University of Victoria, Special Collections. Retrieved: 2010-02-22