I cannot fairly rate this book- I really only read it to read his letters to, and about, Sylvia Plath. Full disclosure- as a loyal Plathie, I hate Ted Hughes with a blinding passion. After reading most of this book I have come away with two main conclusions . One- if Sylvia Plath had not met and married Ted Hughes he probably would have lived out his days as some hick reading Yeats on the moors of Yorkshire, who had never heard of modern dentistry, rather than becoming Poet Laureate. The amount

I want to read part of this collection every day for the rest of my life.

Ha! Finally finished. I read this collection of letters written by Ted Hughes mainly at night in bed and so it took me about half a year. First of all, I've never ever read anything by Ted Hughes. None that I am aware of anyway. I've not even read anything of Sylvia Plath's either. To be honest, I don't like poetry. With the exception of not even a handful poems, I can't even read them. I can't really say why, I don't have the slightest access to it, my brain shuts down the minute I see somethin...

I haven't read much biography - probably fewer than ten volumes in my life. It doesn't appeal to me that much, for no clear reason, other than a lot of my reading is driven by the urge to stimulate my imagination - which is why SF and Fantasy figure strongly on my shelves. The biographies I have read are mainly of figures who have made a significant impression on me and left me with an urge to find out more about them as a person. Doing so hasn't been a waste of time so maybe I should read more?...

Some terrific insights into Hughes’ poetic instinct, drive and craft, but less revealing about the tragedies which beset him - the suicides of Sylvia Plath and Asia Weevil (together with their daughter Shura). There are the expected insights into the bitchy world of literary endeavour and careers, but also the friendships and insights into others. Hughes’ mental world was inhabited by rural and ancient impulses, of wild animals and myth and legend as described in Graves’ The White Goddess. Was h...

"…one person cannot live within another's magic circle, as an enchanted prisoner."

There was a time when I saw Ted Hughes as a monster. With maturity, I have gained a more sympathetic view. I cam eo tthe book most interested in the Plath angle (his relationship with Sylvia, his dealings with Aurelia and the followers of Plath after her death, etc) but ended up most interested in his descriptions of his craft.

This is a big book, over 700 pages of the poet Ted Hughes' letters, and still, as the editor says only a small fraction of Hughes' epistolary output. The letters start from 1947 onwards to the last, only a few days before his death in 1998. Most of the letters in this book refer in some way to poetry, language, and writing as you would expect from a Cambridge undergraduate who gets up at six and reads an hour or two of Shakespeare and Chaucer before nine. The correspondence is mostly to poets, c...

Im not a poetry reader, and prior to reading this, knew next to nothing about Sylvia Plath, and even less about Ted Hughes. And while in retrospoect this seems to me a strange jumping off point, I found myslef enjoying both Hughes' examination of his craft, but even more so the way a gifted contemporary poet writes his correspondence. To my (very) untrained eye, even his most causual correspondence sings with a certain beauty and heft that shines with an aura that only an exceptional talent can

If you are feeling a little weary, a dip into this book will restore you.Contains wonder on every page.

Ted Hughes, for much of his life, appeared to the American literary community as a caricature: a brutal Lothario whose philandering had caused the suicide of Sylvia Plath. This volume of letters, pared from hundreds by Christopher Reid, restores him to more than human stature. For Hughes’s devotion to poetry, whatever his faults as a man, was monolithic as Stonehenge and, as a result, he emerges as a monumental figure in the history of twentieth century verse.That devotion to poetry, but also to...

Nice, elegant and perfect!

Gospel

I haven't finished this book (I am half way through it) but so far I am loving it. It really highlights just how phenomenal a poet he really was. Just the way he writes normal every day prose and his descriptions...wow. All right so I have finished The Letters of Ted Hughes. Once again; WOW. He was the most interesting of men and his letter writing is wonderful, even his conversation flows beautifully. I knew I would cry once I finished the book-even though I knew the end.

If you don't care for Hughes' poetry, it doesn't matter - this is a terribly sad, fascinating and horrifying book about a much more extraordinary and complicated man, much less naive though still fundamentally ingenuous, than I had thought him to be, from his poems and from the Plathiana. I admired his diligence, his curiosity, his pages on living among Americas in America in the 50s - in Northampton and elsewhere - his hondling of his family and Plath's family, and his unwilling bonding with Pl...

In February 1957, Ted Hughes wrote to his sister Olwyn. ‘What a place America is’, he noted, ‘everything is 10,000 miles from where it was plucked or made.’ From the home he was then sharing with Sylvia Plath in Northampton, Massachusetts, Hughes kept in touch with family and friends through long letters. ‘Love’, he wrote, ‘look after yourself. Eat well and speculate hopefully’.From their new home, he went to great lengths to maintain alliances and instruct loyalists, providing a first hand acco...

Required reading for lovers of poetry. From other reviews here, it is also clear that this book changes the minds of those pre-disposed to see Hughes as a monster. Personally, I came to it loving Hughes's entire body of work and bitterly disappointed that I never managed to meet the man while he was alive, and it has not disappointed. These selected letters speak clearly of a man in love with his vocation as poet, private about the emotional pain of his past, and deeply generous to everyone who

Martin KerrTed Hughes’ Letters a poetic and intellectual revelationJanuary 18, 2019 Letters of Ted HughesSelected and edited by Christopher ReidFaber and Faber 2007, 756 pagesTed Hughes (1930-1998) was a big Yorkshire man, from a hard working family who supported and educated him. His brother was Gerard and sister Olwyn. Gerard, ten years older, served in World War Two and migrated to in Australia. Ted was brought up close to where he hunted and fished. He was not an excellent student but manage...

Läsvärt för den intresserade. Han ger intryck av att vara en mycket omtänksam och vänfast person. Givande att därefter se filmen "Sylvia" från 2004.