Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33257 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 756 pages

Synopsis
At the outset of his career Ted Hughes described letter writing as 'excellent training for conversation with the world', and he was to become a prolific master of this art which combines writing and talking. This selection begins when Hughes was seventeen, and documents the course of a life at once resolutely private but intensely attuned to other lives (including a readership comprising both adults and children): a life pared down to essentials and yet eventful, peripatetic, at times publicly controversial.

Customer Reviews

I'M SO GLAD I BOUGHT THIS...
This is an excellently edited collection of Ted Hughes' letters,and I'm very glad that I bought it.
The letters are not written by a man who knew that they would be published, as some letters by famous people are. They are the ordinary letters, some business, some friendly, some loving, that a man who happened to be a brilliant poet wrote to others.

Nobody reading these letters could ever deny that he was an excellent father to Frieda and Nicholas, his and Sylvia Plath's children, and then there is his mention of Shura, his and Assia Wevill's little girl, with the words ' I have two nice children who make life a great pleasure....I had a third, a little marvel, but she died with her mother.'
As the previous reviewer said, quite correctly, this is not a book for voyeurs but knowing Hughes' story makes one cry out with pain at the understated longing in his words here.

His letters to his daughter, Frieda, are a joy to read because of his playful, loving tone and his hours of attention to her writing - and the advice which he gives is extremely useful to any would-be writer.

There are clear photos and - a great pleasure to see - sketches which Hughes included in many of his letters.
His last letter, written to his aunt Hilda nine days before his death, has a clear sketch of the Order of Merit medal he received from the Queen and a very happy description of the ceremony.

The impression of Hughes is of a sensitive man, knowledgeable about classical music, art, poetry (of course) and writing, but also about farming and fishing.
It is very moving to be reading the letters of this big strong man, brought low by the deaths of people he loved - when his father died in 1981, Hughes wrote 'I saw Dad's dead body 18 years to the day on which I saw Sylvia's....
since my usual technique of pressing on regardless was really no good, this time I'm going to do nothing at all for a while... I thought I was quite prepared, having watched him decline for so long...but in fact it gave me the shock of my life. Just that sight of him.'

Ted Hughes was an intensely private man, so there is no written proof of his feelings about the relationships which ended so tragically , except glimpses in his letters and in his collection of poetry 'Birthday Letters' but the love for Carol, his wife who has survived him and for his two children, and the occasional brief flash in his writings of the pain which he had to bear, make him very real to us.

The collecting and editing of this huge book together with the photos and index must have been a difficult task for Christopher Reid,but for us, it is well worth the time and trouble because it pays respect to one of the greatest English poets we shall ever know.

Of little interest to voyeurs, of great interest to others

The poet Ted Hughes experienced the sort of vilification in the second part of his life more appropriate to a war-criminal. His first wife Sylvia Plath committed suicide, as did his partner Assia Wevill. There is ample evidence that both Plath and Wevill were psychologically disturbed before either of them ever set eyes on TH but, it would seem, Ted Hughes had to be vilified. Maybe it's human nature to want a villain. It is certainly human nature to be curious about other people's lives. But if you come to this book with the desire to gawp, or to slaver over juicy (and unedifying) facts, you will find little of interest.

If, on the other hand, you are aware of TH as a poet, there is much here to fascinate and enjoy. Throughout his life he corresponded with a large number of people. There are letters here to his own relatives, to his children Frieda and Nicholas (both as children and as adults), to several great friends whom he met in the 1950s in Cambridge and, yes, there are some love-letters (one is given to understand they are not ALL here. And why should they be ? We don't OWN the man.) There are also letters, as one would expect, to other literary figures : Seamus Heaney, Thom Gunn, Yehuda Amichai the Israeli poet who Ted Hughes befriended in the Sixties and whose work he promoted. The picture that emerges is of a deeply intelligent and well-read individual who thought much on subjects such as the environment (before it was a la mode), shamanism, the role of education, the importance of Shakespeare,etc. etc. He worked closely with several Eastern European poets-Holub, Popa, Pilinszky, Csokits, Herbert-at a time when these literatures were scarcely known in Britain. And he was passionately committed to the young, very encouraging, never patronizing. Receiving a letter from him must have been an experience.

These letters are worth reading and then re-reading .They don't give one the feeling that one is prying into someone's dirty laundry. They are not heavily edited. Though some of them are heartbroken and some of them are angry, they do not present a picture of a victim. Or of someone who deserves to be vilified. The vilifiers will no doubt continue their vilifying. Let 'em. These letters will carry on shining.