55. Jason Neuswanger and Bessie Green, quoted, ‘Remembering Dr Nicholas Hughes’ on the website of the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks, sfos.uaf.edu/memorial/hughes/.
56. Joe Saxton, ‘What suicide gene? My friend Nick was brilliant, passionate and fun’, Sunday Times (London), 29 March 2009.
57. In Howls and Whispers (CP 1182).
58. The only time this word occurs in his Collected Poems.
59. Personal communication.
60. CP 1180. There are good pages on ‘The Offers’ in Middlebrook, Her Husband, pp. 280–2, and Edward Hadley, The Elegies of Ted Hughes (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 138–40 (where it is compared to Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Voice’), though these accounts were written without the benefit of the draft manuscripts.
61. BL Add. MS 88918/1.
62. BL Add. MS 88918/128.
63. Propertius, Elegies, 4.7; ‘The Ghost (after Sextus Propertius)’, in Robert Lowell, Collected Poems (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), pp. 52–4 (originally published in Lord Weary’s Castle (1946), a book which Sylvia gave Ted for his birthday when they were living in America). John Donne’s wonderful ‘The Apparition’ is in the same Propertian tradition of lover–ghost poem.
64. 16 June 1998, to Andrea Paluch and Robert Habeck, in Keith Sagar, ed., Poet and Critic: The Letters of Ted Hughes and Keith Sagar (British Library, 2012), p. 324.
The Principal Works of Ted Hughes
The Hawk in the Rain (London: Faber & Faber, 1957; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957)
Lupercal (London: Faber & Faber, 1960; New York: Harper & Row, 1960)
Meet My Folks! (Illustrated by George Adamson. London: Faber & Faber, 1961; Illustrated by Mila Lazarevich. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973)
Selected Poems by Thom Gunn and Ted Hughes (London: Faber & Faber, 1962)
How the Whale Became and Other Stories (Illustrated by George Adamson. London: Faber & Faber, 1963; Illustrated by Rick Schreiter. New York: Atheneon, 1964)
The Earth-Owl and Other Moon People (Illustrated by R. A. Brandt. London: Faber & Faber, 1963)
Nessie the Mannerless Monster (Illustrated by Gerald Rose. London: Faber & Faber, 1964; Illustrated by Jan Pyk. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1974, as Nessie the Monster)
Recklings (London: Turret Books, 1966)
Wodwo (London: Faber & Faber, 1967; New York: Harper & Row, 1967)
Animal Poems (Crediton, Devon: Richard Gilbertson, 1967)
Poetry in the Making: An Anthology of Poems and Programmes from ‘Listening and Writing’ (London: Faber & Faber, 1967; New York: Doubleday, 1970, as Poetry Is)
Gravestones (Linocuts by Gavin Robbins. Exeter: Bartholomew Books/Exeter College of Art, ?1968)
The Iron Man: A Story in Five Nights (Illustrated by George Adamson. London: Faber & Faber, 1968; Illustrated by Robert Nadler. New York: Harper & Row, 1968, as The Iron Giant)
Seneca’s Oedipus Adapted by Ted Hughes (London: Faber & Faber, 1969; New York: Doubleday, 1972)
The Coming of the Kings and Other Plays (London: Faber & Faber, 1970; Illustrated by Alan E. Cober. New York: Viking, 1974, as The Tiger’s Bones, including additional play Orpheus)
A Few Crows (Illustrated by Reiner Burger. Exeter: Rougemont Press, 1970)
Crow: From the Life and the Songs of the Crow (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin. London: Faber & Faber, 1970; augmented edition 1972; New York: Harper & Row, 1971)
Crow Wakes (Woodford Green, Essex: Poet & Printer, 1971)
Poems: Ruth Fainlight, Ted Hughes, Alan Sillitoe (London: Rainbow Press, 1971)
Shakespeare’s Poem (London: Lexham Press, 1971)
Eat Crow (London: Rainbow Press, 1971)
Selected Poems 1957–1967 (London: Faber & Faber, 1972; New York: Harper & Row, 1973)
Orghast at Persepolis: An Account of the Experiment in Theatre Directed by Peter Brook and Written by Ted Hughes, by A. C. H. Smith (London: Eyre Methuen, 1972; New York: Viking, 1973; including excerpts, summaries and explanations of the play, which was never published)
Prometheus on his Crag (London: Rainbow Press, 1973)
The Story of Vasco: Opera in Three Acts, Music by Gordon Crosse, Libretto Based on an English Version by Ted Hughes of the Play (London: Oxford University Press, 1974)
Season Songs (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin. New York: Viking, 1975; London: Faber & Faber, 1976, though first published privately as Spring Summer Autumn Winter. London: Rainbow Press, 1974; expanded edition, London: Faber & Faber, 1985)
Earth-Moon (Illustrated by the author. London: Rainbow Press, 1976)
Moon-Whales and Other Moon Poems (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin. New York: Viking, 1976; including poems from The Earth-Owl and Other Moon People and Earth-Moon; later UK edition, as Moon-Whales, illustrated by Chris Riddell, London: Faber & Faber, 1988)
Gaudete (London: Faber & Faber, 1977; New York: Harper & Row, 1977)
Moon-Bells and Other Poems (London: Chatto & Windus, 1978; expanded edition illustrated by Felicity Roma Bowers, London: Bodley Head, 1986)
Cave Birds: An Alchemical Cave Drama (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin. London: Faber & Faber, 1978; New York: Viking, 1979; greatly revised and expanded from Cave Birds, London: Scolar Press, 1975)
Orts (London: Rainbow Press, 1978)
Moortown Elegies (London: Rainbow Press, 1978)
Adam and the Sacred Nine (London: Rainbow Press, 1979)
Remains of Elmet (Photographs by Fay Godwin. London: Rainbow Press, 1979; as Remains of Elmet: A Pennine Sequence, London: Faber & Faber, 1979; New York: Harper & Row, 1979)
Moortown (London: Faber & Faber, 1979; New York: Harper & Row, 1980; collects Moortown Elegies, revised version of Prometheus on his Crag, Earth-Numb (sequence including poems from Orts, occasional and broadside publications and some unpublished poems), and revised version of Adam and the Sacred Nine)
Henry Williamson: A Tribute (London: Rainbow Press, 1979)
Under the North Star (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin. New York: Viking, 1981; London: Faber & Faber, 1981)
A Primer of Birds (Woodcuts by Leonard Baskin. Lurley, Devon: Gehenna Press, 1981)
New Selected Poems (New York: Harper & Row, 1982; UK edition as Selected Poems 1957–1981, London: Faber & Faber, 1982)
The Achievement of Ted Hughes, edited by Keith Sagar (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983; a collection of critical pieces on Hughes, with thirty uncollected or unpublished poems)
River (Photographs by Peter Keen. London: Faber & Faber in association with James & James, 1983; New York: Harper & Row, 1984, without photographs)
What is the Truth? A Farmyard Fable for the Young (Illustrated by R. J. Lloyd. London: Faber & Faber, 1984; New York: Harper & Row, 1984)
Ffangs the Vampire Bat and the Kiss of Truth (Illustrated by Chris Riddell. London: Faber & Faber, 1986)
Flowers and Insects: Some Birds and a Pair of Spiders (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin. London: Faber & Faber, 1986; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986)
The Cat and the Cuckoo (Illustrated by R. J. Lloyd. Bideford: Sunstone Press, 1987. Illustrated by Flora McDonnell. London: Faber & Faber, 2002)
Tales of the Early World (Illustrated by Andrew Davidson. London: Faber & Faber, 1988; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1991)
Wolfwatching (London: Faber & Faber, 1989; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1991)
Moortown Diary (London and Boston, Mass.: Faber & Faber, 1989; revised and expanded trade reprint of Moortown Elegies)
Capriccio (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin. Lurley, Devon: Gehenna Press, 1990)
Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being (London: Faber & Faber, 1992; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992, corrected and expanded)
Rain-Charm for the Duchy and Other Laureate Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 1992; also in a limited Faber & Faber edition with a second volume called The Unicorn)
A Dancer to God: Tributes to T. S. Eliot (London: Faber & Faber, 1992; New York: F
arrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993; incorporating T. S. Eliot: A Tribute, London: Faber & Faber, printed privately, 1987)
The Mermaid’s Purse (Illustrated by R. J. Lloyd. Bideford: Sunstone Press, 1993; revised trade edition, illustrated by Flora McDonnell, London: Faber & Faber, 1999)
Three Books: Remains of Elmet, Cave Birds, River (London: Faber & Faber, 1993; collecting poems from these earlier collections, without photographs and with various additions, omissions and revisions)
The Iron Woman: A Sequel to The Iron Man (Illustrated by Andrew Davidson. London: Faber & Faber, 1993; Engravings by Barry Moser. New York: Dial Books, 1995)
Elmet (Photography by Fay Godwin. London: Faber & Faber, 1994; expanded and revised from Remains of Elmet)
Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose, edited by William Scammell (London: Faber & Faber, 1994; New York: Picador USA, 1995)
Earth Dances (Illustrated by R. J. Lloyd. Llandogo, Monmouth: Old Stile Press, 1994)
New Selected Poems: 1957–1994 (London: Faber & Faber, 1995; including ‘Uncollected’ poems from Capriccio/Birthday Letters)
The Dreamfighter and Other Creation Tales (London: Faber & Faber, 1995)
Frank Wedekind: Spring Awakening in a New Version by Ted Hughes (London: Faber & Faber, 1995)
Shakespeare’s Ovid (Illustrated by Christopher Le Brun. London: Enitharmon Press, 1995)
Difficulties of a Bridegroom: Collected Short Stories (London: Faber & Faber, 1995; New York: Picador USA, 1995)
Collected Animal Poems, 4 vols, entitled The Iron Wolf (Illustrated by Chris Riddell), What is the Truth? (Illustrated by Lisa Flather), A March Calf and The Thought-Fox (London: Faber & Faber, 1995)
Federico García Lorca: Blood Wedding. In a New Version by Ted Hughes (London: Faber & Faber, 1996)
Tales from Ovid (London: Faber & Faber, 1997; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997; four of the tales first translated for After Ovid: New Metamorphoses, edited by Michael Hofmann and James Lasdun, London: Faber & Faber, 1994, and then published separately as Shakespeare’s Ovid)
Shaggy and Spotty (Illustrated by David Lucas. London: Faber & Faber, 1997)
Birthday Letters (London: Faber & Faber, 1998; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998)
Howls and Whispers (Illustrated by Leonard Baskin. Northampton, Mass.: Gehenna Press, 1998)
Jean Racine: Phèdre. A New Version by Ted Hughes (London: Faber & Faber, 1998; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999)
The Oresteia of Aeschylus: A New Translation by Ted Hughes (London: Faber & Faber, 1999; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999)
Euripides: Alcestis. In a Version by Ted Hughes (London: Faber & Faber, 1999; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999)
Ted Hughes: Poems Selected by Simon Armitage (London: Faber & Faber, 2000)
Collected Plays for Children (Illustrated by Quentin Blake. London: Faber & Faber 2001; republishes the plays from The Coming of the Kings/The Tiger’s Bones with previously uncollected The Pig Organ)
Collected Poems, edited by Paul Keegan (London: Faber & Faber, 2003; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003; excludes children’s poems, main sequence of Gaudete and some other material)
The Dreamfighter and Other Creation Tales (London: Faber & Faber, 2003)
Collected Poems for Children (Illustrated by Raymond Briggs. London: Faber & Faber, 2005)
Selected Translations, edited by Daniel Weissbort (London: Faber & Faber, 2006)
Letters of Ted Hughes, selected and edited by Christopher Reid (London: Faber & Faber, 2007; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008)
Timmy the Tug: A Story in Colour by Jim Downer; a Story in Rhyme by Ted Hughes (London: Thames & Hudson, 2009)
Poet and Critic: The Letters of Ted Hughes and Keith Sagar, edited by Keith Sagar (London: British Library, 2012)
As Editor
Keith Douglas: Selected Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 1964; New York: Chilmark Press, 1965)
Sylvia Plath: Ariel (London: Faber & Faber, 1965; New York: Harper & Row, 1966)
A Choice of Emily Dickinson’s Verse (London: Faber & Faber, 1968)
Yehuda Amichai: Selected Poems Translated by Assia Gutmann (London: Cape Goliard, 1968; New York: Harper & Row, 1969; expanded reprint, London: Penguin, 1971, acknowledges ‘the collaboration of Ted Hughes’)
A Choice of Shakespeare’s Verse (London: Faber & Faber, 1971; New York: Doubleday, 1971, as With Fairest Flowers while Summer Lasts: Poems from Shakespeare)
Sylvia Plath: Crossing the Water (London: Faber & Faber, 1971; New York: Harper & Row, 1971)
Sylvia Plath: Winter Trees (London: Faber & Faber, 1971; New York: Harper & Row, 1972)
János Pilinszky: Selected Poems Translated by Ted Hughes & János Csokits (Manchester: Carcanet, 1976; revised and enlarged edition, London: Anvil, 1989, as The Desert of Love)
Sylvia Plath: Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (London: Faber & Faber, 1977; New York: Harper & Row, 1979)
Sylvia Plath: Collected Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 1981; New York: Harper & Row, 1981)
The Journals of Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, consulting editor, and Frances McCullough, editor (New York: Dial Press, 1982)
Arvon Foundation Poetry Competition: 1980 Anthology, edited by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney (NP [Todmorden, Lancashire]: Kilnhurst Publishing, 1982)
The Rattle Bag: An Anthology of Poetry, selected by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes (London: Faber & Faber, 1982)
Sylvia Plath’s Selected Poems, chosen by Ted Hughes (London: Faber & Faber, 1985)
A Choice of Coleridge’s Verse (London: Faber & Faber, 1996)
The School Bag, edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes (London: Faber & Faber, 1997)
By Heart: 101 Poems to Remember, with an introduction by Ted Hughes (London: Faber & Faber, 1997)
This bibliography excludes broadside and pamphlet publications of single poems, contributions to multi-authored volumes and periodicals, occasional works, individual essays, articles and reviews. For a full listing, see Ted Hughes: A Bibliography 1946–1995 by Keith Sagar and Stephen Tabor (London and New York: Mansell, 1998). An online supplement by Sagar listing post-1995 publications is, at the time of writing, available at keithsagar.co.uk/Downloads/Hughes/Supplement.pdf.
Hughes’s prolific career reading his work and talking about poetry on the radio can be traced by typing his name into the invaluable ‘BBC Genome’ that reproduces the Radio Times listings for every one of his more than 300 broadcasts (genome.ch.bbc.co.uk). The British Library has nearly 500 recordings of his voice, listed in its Sound and Moving Image Catalogue (cadensa.bl.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/?ps=wiRqgSo17g/WORKS-FILE/0/49).
A selection of audio recordings of him reading his poems and stories, and of the original broadcasts of Poetry in the Making, is available on two sets of two compact discs under the title Ted Hughes: The Spoken Word (BBC/British Library, 2008). The companion Spoken Word CD for Sylvia Plath (BBC/British Library, 2010) includes Two of a Kind: Poets in Partnership, the joint interview with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes recorded on 18 January 1961. ‘The Artist and the Poet: Leonard Baskin and Ted Hughes in Conversation’, recorded in 1983, is available on DVD (Noel Chanan, 2009).
The richest and most revealing interview of Hughes is that by Drue Heinz, ‘The Art of Poetry: LXXI’, The Paris Review, 37 (Spring 1995), http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1669/the-art-of-poetry-no-71-ted-hughes
The following websites are of great value:
Earth-Moon: Information about Ted Hughes: ted-hughes.info/home.html
The Poetry Archive (examples of Ted Hughes reading his own poems): poetryarchive.org/poet/ted-hughes
The Ted Hughes Homepage: ann.skea.com/THHome.htm
THOR: Ted Hughes Online Resources: thetedhughessociety.org/apps/links/
The Ted Hughes Society is well worth joining; its online journal contains a wealth of recent research on both the life and the work.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Readers coming to Ted Hughes for the first
time should begin with either the Selected Poems edited by Simon Armitage for Faber & Faber in 2000 or, more ambitiously, Hughes’s own choice in New Selected Poems: 1957–1994 supplemented by Tales from Ovid and Birthday Letters. The Faber edition of selected Letters is the best introduction to his prose, followed by the essays gathered in Winter Pollen.
Selected Memoirs
Alliston, Susan, Poems and Journals 1960–1969, introduction by Ted Hughes (2010)
Boyanowsky, Ehor, Savage Gods, Silver Ghosts: In the Wild with Ted Hughes (2009)
Feinstein, Elaine, Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet (2001)
Gammage, Nick, ed., The Epic Poise: A Celebration of Ted Hughes (1999)
Hughes, Gerald, Ted and I: A Brother’s Memoir (2012)
Huws, Daniel, Memories of Ted Hughes 1952–1963 (2010)
Koren, Yehuda, and Eilat Negev, A Lover of Unreason: The Life and Tragic Death of Assia Wevill, Ted Hughes’ Doomed Love (2006)
Malcolm, Janet, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (1993)
Murphy, Richard, The Kick: A Life among Writers (2002)
Myers, Lucas, Crow Steered, Bergs Appeared: A Memoir of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath (2001)
Sigmund, Elizabeth, and Gail Crowther, Sylvia Plath in Devon: A Year’s Turning (2014)
Sonnenberg, Ben, Lost Property: Memoirs and Confessions of a Bad Boy (1991)
Tennant, Emma, Burnt Diaries (1999)
Selected Criticism
Ely, Steve, Ted Hughes and South Yorkshire: Made in Mexborough (2015)
Faas, Ekbert, Ted Hughes: The Unaccommodated Universe (1980)
Gifford, Terry, Ted Hughes (2009)
Gifford, Terry, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ted Hughes (2011)
Hadley, Edward, The Elegies of Ted Hughes (2010)
Ted Hughes Page 76