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.
Ted Hughes Books
Edward James Hughes, known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. His most characteristic verse eschews sentimentality, emphasizing the cunning and savagery of animal life in stark, sometimes disjunctive lines. The dialect of his native Yorkshire set the tone for his poetry, and an interest in folklore and anthropology is reflected in his work. Hughes is celebrated for his unflinching engagement with the natural world and human existence, drawing on the raw forces of life.







A March Calf
- 144 pages
- 6 hours of reading
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.
The Journals of Sylvia Plath
- 768 pages
- 27 hours of reading
A beautifully repackaged edition of these intimate, compelling journals.
What is the Truth?
- 128 pages
- 5 hours of reading
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
- 498 pages
- 18 hours of reading
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.
Collected Poems
- 1376 pages
- 49 hours of reading
This book gathers all of Ted Hughes's work, from his earliest poems (published only in journals) through the ground-breaking volumes Crow (1970), Gaudete(1977), and Tales from Ovid (1997). It includes poems Hughes composed for fine-press printers, poems he wrote as England's Poet Laureate, and those children's poems that he meant for adults as well
Crow
- 112 pages
- 4 hours of reading
This anniversary edition celebrates fifty years since the original publication of Crow (1970) - the vital, shape-shifting collectionby Ted Hughes. They are the bones of poems - made of mere lines: rude, surreal, gleeful, desolate poems - which for all their bleakness transmit a flash of hope.
In this collection of tales from the Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes, God appears as an artist who is sometimes surprised by his creatures. He puts an awful lot of care into fashioning the birds, whereas he simply pulls Newt out of the ground. The author's other books for children include The Iron Man.
The Thought Fox
- 80 pages
- 3 hours of reading
All the richness of the wild is seen through the poet's eye. Here are poems from Hawk in the Rain, Wodwo, Wolfwatching, Lupercal and River as well as from Adam and the Sacred Nine, their juxtaposition highlighting the variety of the natural world and of Hughes's poetry about it.
This enthralling tour de force of literary criticism, unprecedented in Shakespeare studies for its scope and daring, is nothing less than an attempt to show the Complete Works - dramatic and poetic - as a single, tightly integrated, evolving organism.
