Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes had two children, Frieda and Nicholas, from his first marriage to Sylvia Plath. Frieda grew up to be a poet and a painter. Nicholas became an expert in stream salmonid ecology; like his mother, he also suffered from depression and on 16 March 2009, he committed suicide in his home in Alaska.

Ted had another daughter, Alexandra Tatiana Elise or Shura with his live-in partner Assia Wevill. Unfortunately, when Wevill committed suicide, she also killed four-year-old Alexandra.

In 1970, a year after Wevill committed suicide he married Carol Orchard, a nurse. They lived together until his death in 1998. They did not have any children.

Ted Hugh was born on 17 August 1930 in Mytholmroyd, a large village within the historical subdivision of West Riding in Yorkshire. His father, William Henry Hughes, was of Irish descent. He had fought at Ypres with Lancashire Fusiliers but at the time of Ted’s birth, worked as a joiner.

Ted’s mother, Edith (née Farrar) Hughes, came from an ancient family that traced its ancestry to William de Ferrières, who came to England in the 11th century with William the Conqueror. He had two siblings. Brother Gerald was older by ten years and sister Olwyn by two years.

Ted began his education at Burnley Road School in Mytholmroyd. When he was seven years old, his family moved to Mexborough in South Yorkshire, where they ran a newspaper and tobacco shop. Here the boy entered Schofield Street junior school and later shifted to Mexborough Grammar School.

As a child, he was fascinated by animals. Growing up in the valleys and moors, he often acted as a retriever while Gerald shot small creatures like magpies, owls, curlews and rats. He also loved to fish, to draw, and collect toy animals.

At school, he was encouraged by his teachers to write. Very soon, he was drawn towards poetry and mentored by his sister Olwyn, he began to write poems from the age of fifteen. By the time he was sixteen, he had made up his mind to become a poet.

Ted Hughes graduated from Cambridge in 1954 with Anthropology and Archaeology. This was also the year that he had several of his poems published. However, during this period, he used the pseudonyms of Daniel Hearing and Peter Crew.

From 1955 to 1956, he supported himself by working as a night watchman, a gardener, a zoo attendant, a reader at a film company, and a teacher. His ultimate plan was to migrate to Australia.

Concurrently he continued with his literary pursuits and on 25 February 1956, he along with his friends threw a party to celebrate the launching of a literally magazine called ‘St. Botolph's Review.’ He was one of the six producers of the magazine, which also carried a few of his poems.

The party was attended by American poet Sylvia Plath. She had come to Cambridge on a Fulbright Scholarship and already had a few works published. Ted and Sylvia fell in love and got married on 16 June 1956. At that time, he was unaware that his new wife had a history of depression and suicide attempts.

After the wedding, the couple settled down at Cambridge, where they lived happily for one year, supporting each other in their literary pursuits. They both had poems published in acclaimed journals like ‘The Nation’, ‘Poetry’ and ‘The Atlantic.’

’The Iron Man: A Children's Story in Five Nights’ is one of his important works. Published in 1968, the book talks of a giant metal man of unknown origin, who after befriending a small boy, defends the world from monstrous aliens.

Among his book of poems, ‘Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow’, is considered to be one of his most important works. The poems in this book borrow heavily from mythology and some are seen as an attack on Christianity.