Facts about Ted Hughes
- 10
Wodwo, Hughes's 1967 collection of 40 poems and short prose pieces, explored metamorphosis and transformation through invented creatures and naturalistic observation that influenced contemporary British experimental poetry.
- 09
During the 1950s, Ted Hughes worked as a radio scriptwriter and film editor for the BBC, writing over 50 scripts before pursuing poetry full-time.
- 08
Moortown, Hughes's 1979 collection of 140 poems written in collaboration with his farmer father Leonard, documented their daily life together on a Devon farm with meticulous agricultural and seasonal detail.
- 07
From 1962 onward, Ted Hughes maintained a 36-year relationship with Assia Wevill, a German-British poet and journalist whose affair with him devastated Sylvia Plath during their marriage.
- 06
Ted Hughes's early collection The Hawk in the Rain, published in 1957 when he was 27, won the prestigious New York Poetry Center competition and launched his international literary career.
- 05
A 1998 autopsy revealed Ted Hughes died of cancer at age 68, just months after publishing Birthday Letters, his 88-poem collection about his relationship with Sylvia Plath.
- 04
Hughes's 1970 collection Crow contained 47 poems exploring dark mythology through the perspective of a single trickster bird character.
- 03
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Ted Hughes wrote over 200 poems for children, including the Crow series and collections like Season Songs that demonstrated his versatility beyond adult literary work.
- 02
Sylvia Plath's 1963 suicide deeply affected Ted Hughes, who faced decades of public blame and scrutiny over their troubled marriage and her death.
- 01
In 1984, Ted Hughes became Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, a position he held for 13 years until his death in 1998.