TED HUGHES (1930-1998) was an English poet and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation, and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath from 1956 until her suicide in 1963 at the age of 30. He served as Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.
Hughes's early poetic work is rooted in nature and, in particular, the innocent savagery of animals, an interest from an early age. He wrote frequently of the mixture of beauty and violence in the natural world. His later work is deeply reliant upon myth and the British bardic tradition, heavily inflected with a modernist, Jungian and ecological viewpoint. He re-worked classical and archetypal myth working with a conception of the dark sub-conscious.
His first collection, THE HAWK IN THE RAIN (1957), attracted considerable critical acclaim. His most significant work is perhaps CROW (1970), which whilst it has been widely praised also divided critics, combining an apocalyptic, bitter, cynical and surreal view of the universe with what sometimes appeared simple, childlike verse.
In addition to his own poetry, Hughes wrote a number of translations of European plays, mainly classical ones. His TALES FROM OVID (1997) contains a selection of free verse translations from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and won the Whitbread Book Of The Year Award. He also wrote both poetry and prose for children, one of his most successful books being THE IRON MAN (1968), a modern fairy tale written to comfort his children after Sylvia Plath's suicide.
In BIRTHDAY LETTERS (1998), his last collection, Hughes broke his decades-long silence on Plath, detailing aspects of their life together and his own behaviour at the time. The book won the 1999 Whitbread Prize for poetry. Hughes's definitive COLLECTED POEMS (2003) appeared posthumously. A poem discovered in October 2010, "Last Letter", describes what happened during the three days leading up to Plath's suicide. Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy said that the poem was "the darkest poem he has ever written" and said that for her it was "almost unbearable to read."
The following books are in ePUB format unless otherwise noted:
== POETRY ==
* Birthday Letters (Faber, 2009)
* Collected Poems (Faber/FSG, 2003) -- ePUB + PDF (by @Mohamed5438)
* Flowers and Insects (Knopf, 1986). Leonard Baskin, illus. -- PDF
* Gaudete (Faber, 1977)
* "Last Letter" (New Statesman, Oct. 2010) -- PDF
* Lupercal (Faber, 2010)
* Moortown Diary (Faber, 2010)
* New Selected Poems, 1957-1994 (Faber, 1995)
* Tales from Ovid (Faber, 2009)
* Ted Hughes Bestiary, A (FSG, 2016). Alice Oswald, ed.
* Wolfwatching (FSG, 1991) -- PDF
== SHORT STORIES ==
* Difficulties of a Bridegroom: Collected Stories (Picador, 1996) -- PDF
== PROSE ==
* Poetry in the Making (Faber, 1970) -- PDF
* Poetry Is (Doubleday, 1970) -- PDF
== TRANSLATIONS & EDITED ANTHOLOGIES ==
* Alcestis by Euripides (FSG, 1999) -- PDF
* Amen by Yehuda Amichai (Harper & Row, 1977) -- PDF
* Choice of Shakespeare's Verse, A (Faber, 2011). Ted Hughes, ed.
* Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems (Faber, 2011). Ted Hughes, ed.
== BOOKS FOR CHILDREN ==
* Cat and the Cuckoo, The (Roaring Press, 2003). Flora McDonnell, illus. -- PDF
* Ffangs the Vampire Bat and the Kiss of Truth (Faber, 1986). C. Riddell, illus. -- PDF
* How the Whale Became & Other Stories (Faber, 2011). George Adamson, illus.
* Iron Giant, The (Yearling, 1999). Andrew Davidson, illus.
* Iron Man, The (Faber, 2005). Tom Gauld, illus.
* Iron Woman, The (Faber, 2012). Douglas Carrel, illus.
* My Brother Bert (FSG, 2009). Tracey Campbell Pearson, illus. -- PDF
* Tigerboy, The (Faber, 2016). Joe McLaren, illus.
* TIger's Bones & Other Plays for Children (Viking, 1974). Alan Cober, illus. -- PDF
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