TED HUGHES, 1930 - 1998

Ted Hughes was born in Mytholmroyd, two miles south-east of Hebden Bridge, and the local Pennine landscape is reflected in his early poetry and in his collaboration with photographer Fay Godwin, Remains of Elmet, reissued as Elmet. His family moved to South Yorkshire in 1938, and he returned briefly to the area when he moved to Heptonstall, above Hebden Bridge, with Sylvia Plath in the mid-1950's.

In addition to his original adult poetryand prose, Ted Hughes was an acclaimed translator of verse and theatrical works.(Click here to go to our list of translations, other lists are also highlighted)He also wrote successful fiction for children and children's poetry, the story The Iron Man being the best-known. He also edited and commented on the work of other writers, notably Shakespeare and Coleridge, as well as that of his wife, the poet Sylvia Plath. He was anxious to encourage children and adults to read and memorise poetry and edited several successful anthologies. He had a beautiful reading voice and made recordings of some of his own work and that of other poets. In the last year of his life, he took everyone by surprise with his powerful verse memoir of Sylvia Plath, Birthday Letters.

He won numerous prizes and was awarded the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1997 and 1998 with Tales from Ovid and Birthday Letters. The latter also won the Forward Prize for Poetry and the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize. Ted Hughes was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984, and received the Order of Merit in 1998.For further information see links to other sites below. He was instrumental in setting up the post of Children's Laureate just before he died. A trust for celebrating Ted Hughes's work has been set up in Mytholmroyd: click here for info.

Most of the following books are currently available from The Book Case. Editions are paperback unless stated otherwise. Collectors' editions have been omitted. Please ask for details.

A Laureate's Landscape: walks around Ted Hughes's Mytholmroyd - John Billingsley (£4.50)

Informative illustrated booklet that takes us around the area in which the ex-Poet Laureate grew up and which inspired some of his most memorable work. The relevant poems are referred to (but not quoted! - the copyright is closely guarded) in the text. Local historian John Billingsley has led many Ted Hughes walks around Mytholmroyd, and here is a permanent memento - or a good substitute if you are unable to take part.

The Ted Hughes Trail in Crimsworth Dean - the Elmet Trust, Donald Crossley, Nick Wilding & Lesley Alston (£2.50)

This colour illustrated booklet with sketchmap takes you on a circular walk from Midgehole visiting places significant in some of Ted Hughes' poems, many of them from Elmet.

Remains: The Elmet Suite by John Reeman & the Ted Hughes Suite by Lawrence Killian, performed by the Todmorden Orchestra
(CD: £8.00).
The Elmet Suite is inspired by five Ted Hughes poems ("Remains of Elmet", "Football at Slack", "In April", "The Weasels We Smoked Out of the Bank" and "There Come Days to the Hills". The Ted Hughes Suite is a descriptive piece celebrating the poet's life: "His Youth", "Affairs of the Heart", "The Poet Laureate". Attractively presented CD commissioned by the Elmet Trust, with explanatory notes.

Please note that some of the prices quoted below are out of date, and some books may have gone out of print. To be updated as soon as time permits!

Now in stock

Memories of Ted Hughes 1952-1963 - Daniel Huws
The life of his Cambridge years, and his friendship with Sylvia Plath. (£5.99)

Ted Hughes and Nature: "Terror and Exultation" by Keith Sagar, £9.50
Hughes' relationship with nature is so central to his work that every book on him has discussed it. However, because of the larger scope of all these books, this discussion has remained at a fairly superficial level. Here Keith Sagar tries to take it onto a deeper level by relating it to paganism and Christianity, myth, Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, and the whole tradition of nature poetry in English, to Hughes' particular canon of revered poets, to his wider reading and the shaping events of his life. He traces Hughes' painful journey from terror in the face of nature in his first three collections, through the transitional works from Crow to Cave Birds, to the transformation in Moortown and Remains of Elmet, culminating in the exultation of River. He argues that these three collections constitute the apex of Hughes' achievement, and are among the great works of world literature.

Ted Hughes and Translation - Daniel Weissbort (£12)
Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort, as co-founders of the magazine Modern Poetry in Translation, had a working relationship over many years. This book provides a unique insight into Hughes's views on translation and his interest in making accessible the work of foreign-language poets and classical drama.

An Essential Self: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, a Memoir - Lucas Myers(£10.99)
As one of Ted Hughes's closest friends, Lucas Myers provides a unique account and assessment of the life and work of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. The author, an American, met Hughes in Cambridge in 1955. They became friends and were together at the scene of Hughes' & Plath's first encounter. Ted stayed with Myers during his courtship of Sylvia in the spring of 1956 before their marriage in the summer. Myers also discusses the role of Assia Wevill, whom he met in 1964, living for a time in the flat she shared with her husband. The intertwined relationships of the poets and their familieis are unravelled, previously unpublished accounts and interpretations of events are examined and the routes to Hughes's Birthday Letters and Plath's 'Ariel voice' carefully followed.

Susan Alliston: Poems and Journals, 1960-1969, introd. by Ted Hughes (£5.99)
Susan Alliston was born and educated in England. In 1960 she moved with her husband to Tunisia, returning to London in 1962. At first a secretary and later a reader for Faber & Faber and Penguin Books, she was friendly with a number of writers who met at the Lamb pub in Holborn. Among them was Ted Hughes. He encouraged her writing, and the journals cast light on aspects of his life and work. Susan Alliston died in 1969. "... a weird blend of something savage and a bit surreal with a hard, fine conscientious realism" - Ted Hughes, 1970.

Adult Poetry

Hawk in the Rain, £10

Lupercal, £8.99

Crow, £8.99 cloth (1995), £3.99 special paperback edition (1999)

Gaudete, £8.99

Moortown Diary (1989) - updated version of Ted Hughes's acclaimed Devon farming sequence, written over a period of several years during which he was spending almost every day outside, either gardening or farming. The introduction and notes (added in 1989) sketch in the background from which these remarkable poems emerged as an improvised verse journal. (£8.99)

Wolfwatching £7.99 (1989)

Raincharm for the Duchy, £4.99 paperback (1992)

Remains of Elmet - Ted Hughes
The original 1979 version, without Fay Godwin’s pictures. "The Calder valley, west of Halifax, was the last ditch of Elmet, the last British Celtic kingdom to fall to the Angles. For centuries it was considered a more or less uninhabitable wilderness, a notorious refuge for criminals, a hide-out for refugees. Then in the early 1800s it became the cradle for the Industrial Revolution in textiles ... Throughout my lifetime, since 1930, I have watched the mills of the region and their attendant chapels die." (Ted Hughes, Preface to "Remains of Elmet" (1979). (£9.99)

Elmet: £14.99 paperback (1994) Currently unavailable, no date say Faber.
The classic collaboration between the poet and the photographer to capture the fading historical character of our area in words and pictures. Its forerunner "Remains of Elmet" is out of print, as is the hardback edition of this one.

Collected Animal Poems, vol. 1, The Iron Wolf, £4.99 (1995) - RPUC
Collected Animal Poems, vol. 2, What is the Truth? £4.99 (1995)
Collected Animal Poems, vol. 3, A March Calf, £5.99) (1995)
Collected Animal Poems, vol. 4, The Thought Fox, £5.99 (1995)

Birthday Letters, £14.99 hardback, (1998), £7.99 paperback, (April 1999)

New Selected Poems 1957-1994, £12.99

Collected Poems of Ted Hughes (£40 hardback, £16.99 paperback)
From the astonishing debut "Hawk in the Rain" (1957), to his death in 1998, Ted Hughes has been a giant on the literary landscape of the 20th century. This collection gathers five decades of his work, from his earliest magazine publications through all of his books - including such ground-breaking volumes as "Crow", "Tales from Ovid" and "Birthday Letters". The text also includes all pamphlet and privately printed editions, as well as those children's poems that Hughes himself marked out for an adult readership. This comprehensive account of Hughes's work stands testament to an original voice that as Seamus Heaney has described, was simply "longer and deeper and rougher".

Ted Hughes Poems selected by Simon Armitage, £4.99 (2004)

Prose

Difficulties of a Bridegroom, paperback £10 - short stories

Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose, £16.99, n.e. (1995)

Poetry in the Making - Ted Hughes
A reissue of his 1967 publication which accompanied his broadcasts to schools. The purpose throughout is to lead on, via discussion of the poems, to some direct encouragement to the children to think and write for themselves. He makes the whole venture seem enjoyable, and somehow urgent. (£9.99)

Journals of Sylvia Plath, US paperback, £8.50, n.e. (1998)

Children's Poetry

Season Songs, hardback £3.99, 2r.e. 1985

Meet My Folks! £3.99, 2r.e. 1987

Mermaid's Purse £4.99 (1999)

The Cat and the Cuckoo (£10.00)
Collection of animal poems for younger readers, ill. Flora McDonnell (2002)

Collected Poems for Children by Ted Hughes, hardback £16.99, £9.99 paperback, illustrated by Raymond Briggs
Collects, for the first time, four decades of Hughes's children's poems, from Meet My Folks! (1961) to The Mermaid's Purse. The book is presented by reading age, beginning with poems for younger readers and working up to Hughes's material for young adults.

Children's Fiction and Plays

Iron Man, £4.99, n.e. (1989)

Iron Woman £4.99 (2002)

How the Whale Became and Other Stories, £4.99, n.e. (1989)

How the Whale Became and other stories, illustrated by Jackie Morris, hardback £17.99, paperback £9.99
Large-format hardback of Ted Hughes's creation tales for children, beautifully illustrated in colour

Tales of the Early World, cloth £5.95 (1988), paperback £4.99, n.e. (1990)

Ffangs the Vampire Bat, £3.99 (1990)

Moonwhales, cloth, £7.50 (1988), paperback paperback £3.99, n.e. (1991)

Nessie the Mannerless Monster (1992), £3.99

Dreamfighter and Other Creation Tales, paperback £6.99, n.e. (1996)

Timmy the Tug - Ted Hughes & Jim Downer (£12.95)
A children's poem lost for over fifty years. Written in the mid-1950s to accompany his friend Jim Downer's story about Timmy the Tug, the poem recounts Timmy's escape from his moorings and subsequent adventures on the high seas.

Collected Plays for Children £6.99 (2001)
Collects six plays suitable for performance by children, including The Pig Organ, never before published. The others are The Coming of the Kings, The Tiger's Bones, Beauty and the Beast, Sean, the Fool, the Devil and the Cats, and Orpheus.

Translations

Oedipus - Lucius Annaeus Seneca, £5.99 (1969)

Alcestis £12.99 (1999) , £7.99 (2000)

Spring Awakening - Frank Wedekind, £6.99, n.e. (1995)

Blood Wedding - Frederico Garcia Lorca, £6.99 (1996)

Tales from Ovid: Twenty-four Passages from the ·Metamorphoses' paperback £9.99 (1997)

Phedre: A Version of Racine, £6.99 (1998)

CDs, read by Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes Reading His Poetry (Double CD) (£12.99)

The Spoken Word : Ted Hughes: Poetry in the Making (£15.95)
This two-CD set draws on the broadcasts Ted Hughes made for schools, particularly the highly praised "Listening and Writing" series, later published as "Poetry in the Making", in which Hughes aimed to encourage an interest in imaginative writing in 10-14 year olds. Hughes explains the origins and development of some of his most famous animal poems, such as "The Thought-Fox and Pike", and suggests techniques of concentration for translating thoughts into poems.

The Spoken Word: Ted Hughes: Poems and Short Stories (£15.95)
This two-CD set is drawn from the BBC Radio broadcasts of Ted Hughes and features live and studio recordings of the poet introducing and reading his own work. The recordings include his earliest surviving poetry broadcast and extensive selections from "Remains of Elmet" and "Moortown Diary", plus selections from his "Crow" poems and two complete short stories, "The Harvesting" and "Snow".

Literary Criticism & Biography

Ted Hughes - Terry Gifford (£14.99)

Clear and detailed discussions of Hughes' poetry, stories, plays, translations, essays and letters; includes new biographical information, and previously unpublished archive material, especially on Hughes' environmentalism; provides a comprehensive account of Hughes' critical reception, separated into the major themes that have interested readers and critics; offers useful suggestions for further reading, and incorporates helpful cross-references between sections of the guide. Part of the "Routledge Guides to Literature" series.

Her Husband: Hughes & Plath - A Marriage - Diane Middlebrook, paperback, £9.99
Ted Hughes was a young man and already something of a literary star when he married Sylvia Plath. When she committed suicide severn years later, he became the executor of the substantial body of her work which had made her a powerful political icon - and cast a shadow over Hughes's career and reputation. In this fresh approach, Diane Middlebrook looks at Hughes's poetic capabilities, ambitious literary career and its inflection by the reputation of his dead wife, draw on interviews and his unpublished letters and papers.

Ted Hughes - the Life of a Poet - Elaine Feinstein, OUT OF PRINT
A biography of the former Poet Laureate and an exploration of his marriage to Sylvia Plath. The author argues that they were both flawed geniuses and that the truth about the failure of their marriage must incorporate her fragility and his recklessness.

The Laughter of Foxes: A Study of Ted Hughes - Keith Sagar (£18.50)
Second revised edition of the first study to survey the whole of Hughes's achievement. Includes extracts from Hughes's letters to the author, a detailed chronology of his life and work by Anna Skea, and the first publication of the background story of "Crow".

The Epic Poise - a Celebration of Ted Hughes, paperback £9.99
Edited by Nick Gammage, with many well-known contributors, including Simon Armitage, Raymond Briggs, Sir John Gielgud, Seamus Heaney, Susan Hill, Glyn Hughes, Roger McGough, Brian Patten and Marina Warner.

Ariel's Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the story of "Birthday Letters", by Erica Wagner, £7.99
Groups the poems in Birthday Letters and gives the sequence a biographical framework, as well discussing the connections between the two poets' work.

Poetry of Ted Hughes: Language, Illusion and Beyond - Paul Bentley, £15.99
Sets Ted Hughes' poems in the context of developments in literary theory that occurred during his life.

Ted Hughes: Beginner's Guides series - Charlie Bell (£5.99)
Aimed at anyone needing a clear but intelligent guide to Ted Hughes, useful to adult learners returning to literature, A-level and undergraduate students and the general public. Contains a biography and advice on how to tackle his poetry, investigates his themes and major works and also some modern critical approaches including ecocriticism and ecofeminism. Concludes with a "Where To Next" chapter.

Letters to Ted - Daniel Weissbort (£8.95)
A collection of poems in memory of the late Poet Laureate. The two men met as students in the 1950s and co-founded Modern Poetry in Translation in 1965.

Savage Gods, Silver Ghosts: In the Wild with Ted Hughes - Ehor Boyanowsky (£19.99)
Ehor Boyanowsky became friends with Ted Hughes through their shared passion for fishing, and this is a portrait of Ted Hughes the outdoorsman via their joint fishing expeditions in British Columbia.

Works of other writers edited by Ted Hughes

Emily Dickinson: Choice of Verse, £7.99, n.e. (1969)

Sylvia Plath: Collected Poems, £12.99, (1981)

Sylvia Plath: Selected Poems, £7.99 (1985)

Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, OUT OF PRINT

Anthologies

Poetry in the Making: An Anthology of Poems and Programmes from "Listening and Writing," £9.99 (1969)

School Bag (with Seamus Heaney), cloth £20.00, paperback £12.99 (1997)

By Heart: 101 Poems and How to Remember Them, £6.99 (1997)

Links to further information about Ted Hughes:

The Elmet Trust, Mytholmroyd: http://www.theelmettrust.co.uk/
A charitable company based in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, celebrating the poetry of Ted Hughes. Organises regular Ted Hughes Festivals.

University of Leipzig: http://www.earth-moon.org/index.html
Includes a brilliant introduction to Ted Hughes' work and life with interviews and photographs.
Also includes a good range of other links

Mytholmroyd Website: Ted Hughes Corner: http://www.mytholmroyd.net
Coordinated by Frances Robinson in association with Chris Ratcliffe of Pennine Pens. Chris also runs the Hebden Bridge website.

Appreciation: http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1655550,00.html
An appreciation by the poet Alice Oswald

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