Ted Hughes was an English poet and children’s writer. Critics rate him as one of the best poets of his generation. In 2011, he was immortalized in the Poets` corner of Westminster Abbey.
Born: 17 August 1930
Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, England
Poet, playwright, writer
Biography by Ted Hughes
Born August 17, 1930
Ted Hughes was born in Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, in the family of William Henry Hughes and Edith Hughes.
Ted had an elder brother Gerald and a sister Alvina. The first 6 years of life become crucial in the biography of Ted Hughes.
When Hughes was seven, his family moved to Mexborough, South Yorkshire. He attended the secondary school of Mexborough, where teachers encouraged his aspiration for writing.
In the 1954, he graduated from Pembroke College of the Cambridge University. In the 1959, he graduated with a Masters degree from Cambridge.
The poet was married to an American poetess Sylvia Plath in 1956-1962, that produced an ambiguous impact on the biography of Ted Hughes.
Books by Ted Hughes
The first poetic book of Hughes “The Hawk in the Rain” (1957) was enthusiastically greeted by criticism. It was awarded in New York for literary debut. It won the ‘Harper publication’ contest and the ‘Somerset Maugham Award’. The collection included the best poems of Hughes, including “The Thought Fox”.
Hughes wrote 14 collections of poems, 17 books for children, 2 storybooks, a few plays and several volumes of translations, including translations of Ovid and Euripides, which brought him the “Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry”. In 1984, he received the lifetime title of poet laureate of England. Ted Hughes became a friend of the Royal family and wrote odes to the family celebrations. And yet, the poet always felt the expressed or unspoken accusation in the death of the poetess Sylvia Plath.
In the late 90 ‘s, the incurable cancer was revealed at Hughes; and several months before his death, he published the collection of poems “Birthday Letters”. It collected all his poems dedicated to Sylvia Plath.
Popular poems by Ted Hughes
- Examination at the Womb-Door
- Wind
- Hawk Roosting
- The Harvest Moon
- Lovesong
- The Thought-Fox
- Old Age Gets Up
- Work and Play
- Thistles
- The Warm and the Cold
Ted Hughes death: 28 October 1998,London, England
