Ted Hughes, "New selected poems", - 1957-1994

Ted Hughes is one of the most imposing figures of English poetry in the second half of the Twentieth Century. He had already reached widespread literary acclaim before he was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984. Part of his fame, though perhaps not the most pleasant part for him, he acquired simply for having been the husband of the American poet Sylvia Plath (1932-1963). This private tragedy, for which he had long been publicly blamed, reached literary status with the publication, on the year of Hughes' death, of his autobiographical verse novel Birthday Letters. This collection of confessional poems, apart from having been one of the very rare instances of best-sellers among poetry books, came to cast a retrospective light on the œuvre as a whole, which called for a new survey of its main themes and issues. The New Selected Poems 1957-1994, because they have been selected and edited by Ted Hughes himself, remain the readiest digest of his work, and the book by which most readers will begin. Still, rooted as it is in the story of its author's life, and perhaps precisely because of that, Hughes' poetry meets some of the essential preoccupations of its time.