| Description |
xx, 361 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [345]-350) and index. |
| Form |
Also issued online. |
| Contents |
Introduction: Becoming her husband -- Chapter 1. Meeting (1956) -- Ted Huge -- Flashy American -- The "diary I" -- Chapter 2. Romance (1956) -- The White Goddess: "song" -- Plath's idyll -- "To Ariadne, deserted by Theseus" -- Chapter 3. His family (1956) -- Leo -- William Henry Hughes (1894-1981) -- Edith Farrar Hughes (1898-1969) -- Gerald Hughes (1920- ) -- Chapter 4. Struggling (1956-1963) -- Rabbit stew -- Silent strangers -- Complicated animals -- Earth mother -- The luxury of solitude -- Chapter 5. Prospering (1957-1963) -- Money -- Portrait of the artist as a young woman -- Literary London -- Homemaking -- Literary lion -- Fertility -- Chapter 6. Separating (1962- ) -- "The rabbit catcher" -- He said, she said -- Chapter 7. Parting (1962-1963) -- Plath turns thirty: Ariel -- "Daddy" -- London on her own -- Doubletake -- Chapter 8. Husbandry (1963-1998) -- Hughes's tribe -- Hughes's Ariel -- The wodwo and the crow -- Stewardship -- Chapter 9. Curing himself (1967-1998) -- "Knot of obsessions" -- Sinking into folk-tale -- From "relic husband" to "her husband" -- Chapter 10. The magical dead (1984-1998) -- Poet of England -- The drama of completion -- Coda: Naked (1998- ) |
| Summary |
This volume investigates the romantic relationship between American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) and English poet Ted Hughes (1930-1998). Beginning with the historic moment of their first meeting, the author describes Plath and Ted Hughes's first encounter as violent and almost mythic, punctuated with kisses and biting. In 112 days they were married. Together, they formed a unique literary bond. They remained aggressive intellectual and erotic partners. But, six years later, Hughes left Plath and their two children for another woman. Plath committed suicide shortly after, while Hughes would go on to a long and successful career as a poet and as Plath's literary executor. The author offers fresh evidence of Hughes' beliefs in Shamanism, psychic telepathy and the predatory instinct, and she breaks new ground in tracing the couple's interactive creative relationship, suggesting that neither would have produced his or her best poetry without the other. |
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"Ted Hughes married Sylvia Plath in 1956, at the outset of their brilliant careers. Plath's suicide six and a half years later, for which many held Hughes accountable, changed his life, his closest relationships, his standing in the literary world, and brought new significance to his poetry." "In this new biography of their marriage, Diane Middlebrook presents a portrait of Hughes as a man, as a poet, and as a husband haunted - and nourished - his entire life by the aftermath of his first marriage. How marriages fail and how men fail in marriages is one of the book's central themes." "Drawing on a trove of newly available papers, Middlebrook presents Hughes as a complicated, conflicted figure: sexually magnetic, fiercely ambitious, immensely caring, and shrewd in business. She argues that Plath's suicide, though it devastated Hughes and made him vulnerable to the savage attacks of Plath's growing readership, ultimately gave him his true subject - re-creating himself for posterity through his marriage to Sylvia Plath and his struggles within his own historical circumstances."--BOOK JACKET. |
| Subject |
Hughes, Ted, 1930-1998 -- Marriage.
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Plath, Sylvia -- Marriage.
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Poets, English -- 20th century -- Biography.
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Poets, American -- 20th century -- Biography.
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Married people -- Great Britain -- Biography.
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Authors' spouses -- Great Britain -- Biography.
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| ISBN |
0670031879 (acid-free paper) |
|
9780670031870 (acid-free paper) |
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