Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes (born August 17, 1930, Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, England—died October 28, 1998, London) was an English poet whose most characteristic verse is without sentimentality, emphasizing the cunning and savagery of animal life in harsh, sometimes disjunctive lines. Hughes served as poet laureate of Britain from 1984 to 1998. For many contemporary readers, his legacy as a poet is complicated by his volatile marriage to American poet Sylvia Plath, who died by suicide in 1963.

Childhood and education

Hughes was born in a mill town in West Yorkshire, England, and moved to the coal-mining town of Mexborough when he was seven. His father, William Hughes, was a joiner who opened a newspaper store in Mexborough. His mother, Edith (née Farrar) Hughes, was a textile machinist. The youngest of three children, Ted Hughes grew up with a love for the English countryside, animals, and hunting, all of which found their way into his poetry.

Hughes served two years in the Royal Air Force and was stationed in northern Yorkshire as a radio mechanic. After his service he attended Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he found folklore and anthropology of particular interest. These concerns were also reflected in a number of his poems. He graduated in 1954 and worked various jobs, including zoo attendant and gardener, but he soon returned to Cambridge to participate in the literary circle there.

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Marriage to Sylvia Plath, first poetry collections, and Plath’s death

In 1956 he met and married Plath, who had been studying at Cambridge on a Fulbright scholarship. The couple moved to the United States in 1957, the year that his first volume of verse, The Hawk in the Rain, was published. Other works soon followed, including the highly praised Lupercal (1960) and Selected Poems (1962, with Thom Gunn, a poet whose work is frequently associated with Hughes’s as marking a new turn in English verse). Poet and critic Robert B. Shaw wrote that “Hughes’s poetry signaled a dramatic departure from the prevailing modes of the period [after World War II]. The stereotypical poem of the time was determined not to risk too much: politely domestic in its subject matter, understated and mildly ironic in style. By contrast, Hughes marshaled a language of nearly Shakespearean resonance to explore themes which were mythic and elemental.”

Hughes and Plath had two children, Frieda and Nicholas, before separating in 1962 after Hughes had an affair with German poet Assia Wevill, who had been a friend of the couple. He stopped writing poetry almost completely for nearly three years following Plath’s suicide in 1963, but thereafter he published prolifically, with volumes of poetry such as Wodwo (1967), Crow (1970), Wolfwatching (1989), and New Selected Poems, 1957–1994 (1995). In his last collection published in his lifetime, Birthday Letters (1998), he addressed his relationship with Plath after decades of silence.

As the executor of her estate, Hughes also edited and published several volumes of her work in the period 1965–98, including Ariel (1965) and The Collected Poems (1981). His changes to Plath’s original manuscript of Ariel, such as reordering the poems and removing others, attracted scrutiny, although some critics believe that his editing strengthened the collection. For further discussion, see Ariel. He was also accused of censoring her writings after he revealed that he had destroyed a journal that she had written before her suicide. Hughes’s explanation for this action was that he was trying to protect their children.

Later life and works

Hughes and Wevill had a daughter, Shura, in 1965. Four years later Wevill took both her life and Shura’s, using the same method of suicide as Plath had (carbon monoxide poisoning). In 1970 Hughes married English nurse Carol Orchard. He continued to be the target of ire by feminist critics and writers. At some of his public readings, he was interrupted by attendees who called him a murderer. American poet Robin Morgan notoriously called him such in her poem “Arraignment” (1972), the opening lines of which include “I accuse / Ted Hughes.” Even after Hughes’s death, his relationship with Plath remained controversial. In 2018 a volume of Plath’s letters was published, including ones addressed to her psychiatrist in which she alleged abuse by Hughes.

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Nevertheless, Hughes continued to be held in high regard in English literature and experimented with various genres and forms. He wrote many books for children, notably the novel The Iron Man (1968; also published as The Iron Giant; film 1999) and the posthumously released poetry collection The Mermaid’s Purse (1999). Remains of Elmet (1979), in which he recalled the world of his childhood, is one of many publications he created in collaboration with photographers and artists. He translated Egyptian-born Lebanese poet and dramatist Georges Schehadé’s play The Story of Vasco from the original French and shaped it into a libretto. The resulting opera, from which significant portions of his text were cut, premiered in 1974. A play based on Hughes’s original libretto was staged in 2009.

His works also include an adaptation of Seneca’s Oedipus (1968), nonfiction (Winter Pollen, 1994), and translations. He edited many collections of poetry, such as The Rattle Bag (1982, with Seamus Heaney). A collection of his correspondence, edited by Christopher Reid, was released in 2007 as Letters of Ted Hughes. A selection of his poems concerning animal life was published as A Ted Hughes Bestiary (2014).

Honors

In 1977 Hughes was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). In 1984 he was appointed Britain’s poet laureate, a role he held until his death from cancer in 1998. His other honors include the Whitbread Book of the Year award (now the Costa Book Award) for Tales from Ovid (1997) and Birthday Letters (1998). The latter collection also earned him the Forward Prize for Poetry. Shortly before his death Hughes was admitted to the Order of Merit by Queen Elizabeth II. In 2011 a memorial plaque commemorating Hughes was installed in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey.