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Ted Hughes Biography & Facts

Edward James Hughes (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and held the office until his death. In 2008, The Times ranked Hughes fourth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". He married fellow poet Sylvia Plath in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England, in a tumultuous relationship. They had two children before separating in 1962 and Plath ended her own life in 1963. Biography Early life Hughes was born at 1 Aspinall Street, in Mytholmroyd in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to William Henry (1894–1981) and Edith (née Farrar) Hughes (1898–1969), and raised among the local farms of the Calder Valley and on the Pennine moorland. Hughes's sister Olwyn Marguerite Hughes (1928–2016) was two years older and his brother Gerald (1920–2016) was ten years older. One of his mother's ancestors had founded the Little Gidding community. Most of the more recent generations of his family had worked in the clothing and milling industries in the area. Hughes's father, William, a joiner, was of Irish descent and had enlisted with the Lancashire Fusiliers in the First World War and fought at Ypres. He narrowly escaped being killed when a bullet lodged in a pay book in his breast pocket. He was one of just 17 men of his regiment to return from the Dardanelles Campaign (1915–16). The stories of Flanders fields filled Hughes's 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 before his family moved to Mexborough, 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. 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. At the age of about 13 a friend, John Wholey, took Hughes to his home at Crookhill Lodge, on the Crookhill estate above Conisbrough, where the boys were able to fish and shoot. Hughes became close to the Wholey family and learnt a lot about wildlife from Wholey's father, the head gardener and gamekeeper. He came to view fishing as an almost religious experience. Hughes attended Mexborough Secondary School (later Grammar School), where a succession of teachers encouraged him to write, and develop his interest in poetry. Teachers Miss McLeod and Pauline Mayne introduced him to the poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and T.S. Eliot. Hughes was mentored by his sister Olwyn, who was well versed in poetry, and another teacher, John Fisher. Poet Harold Massingham also attended this school and was also mentored by Fisher. In 1946, one of Hughes's 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 (1949–1951) 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 W. B. Yeats's poetry. Career In 1951 Hughes initially studied English at Pembroke College under M. J. C. Hodgart, an authority on balladic forms. Hughes felt encouraged and supported by Hodgart'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. 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, receiving only a third-class grade in Part I of the Anthropology and Archaeology Tripos in 1954. 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. After university, living in London and Cambridge, Hughes went on to have many varied jobs including working as a rose gardener, a nightwatchman and a reader for the British film company J. Arthur Rank. He worked at London Zoo as a washer-upper, a post that offered plentiful opportunities to observe animals at close quarters. On 25 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. Hughes's biographers note that Plath did not relate her history of depression and suicide attempts 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. Plath typed up Hughes's manuscript for his collection Hawk in the Rain which went on to win a poetry competition run.... Discover the Ted Hughes popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Ted Hughes books.