Ted Hughes Books

When Michael Hofmann and James Lasdun's ground-breaking anthology After Ovid (also Faber) was published in 1995, Hughes's three contributions to the collective effort were nominated by most critics as outstanding.

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.

From the trembling new-born calf in Season Songs to the gently sleeping one recorded in Moortown Diary, animal life as observed in the pages of Flowers and Insects, Elmet, River, Lupercal and Hawk in the Rain is seen afresh through the diversity and imaginative energy of this collected volume.

Sylvia Plath began keeping a diary as a young child. By the time she was at Smith College, when this book begins, she had settled into a nearly daily routine with her journal, which was also a sourcebook for her writing. Plath once called her journal her “Sargasso,” her repository of imagination, “a litany of dreams, directives, and imperatives,” and in fact these pages contain the germs of most of her work. Plath’s ambitions as a writer were urgent and ultimately all-consuming, requiring of her a heat, a fantastic chaos, even a violence that burned straight through her. The intensity of this struggle is rendered in her journal with an unsparing clarity, revealing both the frequent desperation of her situation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons. Written in electrifying prose, The Journals of Sylvia Plath provide unique insight, and are essential reading for all those who have been moved and fascinated by Plath’s life and work.

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) is a key figure in 20th-century English poetry, known for his deep connection to English history, literature, and nature. Seamus Heaney described his work as a "remembrance of love," highlighting Hughes' unflinching view of crises. This bilingual edition explores the range of Hughes' poetry, from nature to myth.

'Other folks get so well known,And nobody knows about my own,'Have you met my sister Jane? And my other Granny is an octopus... Meet Aunt Flo, Brother Bert and more extraordinary family members in Ted Hughes' irresistible Meet My Folks, his first book for children, illustrated beautifully by George Adamson.

First published in 1984, this book of prose-linked animal poems won both the Guardian Children's Fiction Award and the Signal Poetry Award. This new, illustated edition remains 'a very beautiful book: God and his son go to visit mankind and ask a few simple questions . . . the poems are pure enchantment' (The School Librarian).

The Rattle Bag is an anthology of poetry (mostly in English but occasionally in translation) for general readers and students of all ages and backgrounds. These poems have been selected by the simple yet telling criteria that they are the personal favorites of the editors, themselves two of contemporary literature's leading poets.Moreover, Heaney and Hughes have elected to list their favorites not by theme or by author but simply by title (or by first line, when no title is given). As they explain in their "We hope that our decision to impose an arbitrary alphabetical order allows the contents [of this book] to discover themselves as we ourselves gradually discovered them--each poem full of its singular appeal, transmitting its own signals, taking its chances in a big, voluble world."With undisputed masterpieces and rare discoveries, with both classics and surprises galore, The Rattle Bag includes the work of such key poets as William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Lewis Carroll, Dylan Thomas, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath among its hundreds of poems. A helpful Glossary as well as an Index of Poets and Works are offered at the conclusion of this hefty, unorthodox, diverse, inspired, and inspiring collection of poetry.

The response of one writer to the work of another can be doubly illuminating. This title presents a selection of Sylvia Plath's poetry. It draws upon the collections Ariel, The Colossus, Crossing the Water and Winter Trees, and from Sylvia Plath's Pulitzer Prize-winning Collected Poems.