HUGHES, TED, 1930-1998. Ted Hughes papers, 1940-2002 Emory University Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library Atlanta, GA 30322 404-727-6887 [email protected] Descriptive Summary Creator: Hughes, Ted, 1930-1998. Title: Ted Hughes papers, 1940-2002 Call Number: Manuscript Collection No. 644 Extent: 94.25 linear feet (191 boxes), 13 oversized papers boxes and 5 oversized papers folders (OP), 1 oversized bound volume (OBV), and AV Masters: 1.25 linear feet (2 boxes) Abstract: Papers of British poet laureate Ted Hughes including correspondence, writings by Hughes, materials relating to Sylvia Plath, writings by other authors, subject files, printed material, photographs, personal effects and memoriabilia, and audiovisual materials. Language: Materials entirely in English. Administrative Information Restrictions on Access Special restrictions apply. Letters written by Janos Csokits and Daniel Weissbort are restricted and require the permission of the copyright holder in writing in order to be examined. Letters from Seamus Heaney are closed to researchers for the lifetime of Carol Hughes. Access to selected additional letters are restricted for a period of twenty-five years (2022) or the for the lifetime of Carol Hughes, whichever is greater. See container list for specific restrictions. Special restrictions: Use copies have not been made for audiovisual material in this collection. Researchers must contact the Rose Library at least two weeks in advance for access to these items. Collection restrictions, copyright limitations, or technical complications may hinder the Rose Library's ability to provide access to audiovisual material. Terms Governing Use and Reproduction Special restrictions apply: letters and manuscripts by Ted Hughes and most photographs may not be reproduced without the written permission of Carol Hughes. Emory University does not control copyright for items in this collection. These items are made available for individual viewing and reference for educational purposes only, such as personal Emory Libraries provides copies of its finding aids for use only in research and private study. Copies supplied may not be copied for others or otherwise distributed without prior consent of the holding repository. Ted Hughes papers, 1940-1999 Manuscript Collection No. 644 study, preparation for teaching, and research. Your reproduction, distribution, public display or other re-use of any content beyond a fair use as codified in section 107 of US Copyright Law or other applicable privilege is at your own risk. It is your sole responsibility to investigate the copyright status of an item and obtain permission when needed. The copyright to all original Ted Hughes unpublished writings (such as letters and manuscripts) is owned by Carol Hughes. Researchers must obtain her permission to publish or reproduce this material. The use of personal cameras is prohibited. Separated Material Emory University also holds the private library of Ted Hughes, as well as books formerly owned by Sylvia Plath. These materials may be located in the Emory University online catalog by searching for: Hughes, Ted, former owner and Plath, Sylvia, former owner. Related Materials in This Repository Ted Hughes, Letters to Janos Csokits, 1960-1998; Ted Hughes, Letters to Frieda Hughes, 1971-1997; Ted Hughes, Letters to Gerald Hughes, 1952-1991; Ted Hughes, Letters to W.S. and Dido Merwin, 1958-1969; Ted Hughes, Letters to Lucas Myers, 1955-1988; Ted Hughes, Letters to Peter Redgrove, ca. 1966-1984; Ted Hughes, Letters to Ben Sonnenberg, 1961-2000; Ted Hughes, Letters to Edna Wholey, ca. 1947-1951; Peter Fallon/Gallery Press collection; Seamus Heaney papers, Seamus Heaney collection, Anthony Hecht papers, Medbh McGuckian papers, Paul Muldoon papers; Edna O'Brien papers; Tom Paulin papers; Emma Tennant papers; Daniel Weissbort papers. Source Purchase, 1997 with previous acquisitions and subsequent additions. Citation [after identification of item(s)], Ted Hughes papers, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University. Processing Processed by Literary Collections Assistants. This finding aid may include language that is offensive or harmful. Please refer to the Rose Library's harmful language statement for more information about why such language may appear and ongoing efforts to remediate racist, ableist, sexist, homophobic, euphemistic and other oppressive language. If you are concerned about language used in this finding aid, please contact us at [email protected]. Collection Description Biographical Note Ted Hughes was born on August 17th, 1930, the third child of Edith Farrar and William Hughes of Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire. When he was seven the family moved to Mexborough, a nearby mining town, where Hughes' parents ran a local newsagent's shop. There Hughes attended Mexborough Grammar School where he first began writing adventure stories and, later, verse, 2 Ted Hughes papers, 1940-1999 Manuscript Collection No. 644 as he has explained, "when I discovered that what I wrote amused my classmates." Two poems from this period-among the earliest he wrote-survive in the Ted Hughes papers. In 1948 Hughes won a scholarship to attend Pembroke College, Cambridge, but he first completed two years of national service as a ground wireless mechanic in an isolated RAF station in East Yorkshire. As he later recalled, there he had "nothing to do but read and reread Shakespeare and watch the grass grow." The landscape of his early years in Yorkshire left a permanent imprint on his later poetry as it also did on his life-long habits of sight. In 1951 Hughes entered Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he first studied English literature, before switching in his third year to archaeology and anthropology. After completing his degree, Hughes divided his time between Cambridge and London where he drifted between a variety of odd jobs, among them that of a script reader for Pinewood Studios (?). In the years immediately after finishing at Cambridge, he also began publishing poems under a variety of pseudonyms in local literary magazines, among them Chequer, Granta , and Delta . In February 1956 Hughes contributed four poems to a new literary magazine called St. Boltoph's Review . It was at a party to mark the launch of the new magazine that he first met the American poet Sylvia Plath who was in Cambridge on a Fulbright Scholarship. Soon after, on Bloomsday, June 16th, 1956, they were married in a small service at the church of St. George the Martyr in London. At the time, Plath had already published numerous stories and poems in leading American magazines, and she soon introduced Hughes to an active program or regular manuscript submissions to leading literary magazines far beyond Cambridge. His first acceptance, as recorded in the scrapbook that Plath kept at the time, came with the publication of "Bawdry Embraced" in the August 1956 issue of Poetry magazine. On the first anniversary of their meeting, Hughes learned that a collection of his poems, The Hawk in the Rain, had been selected by Marianne Moore, W.H. Auden, and Stephen Spender, as the best first collection out of 287 entries in a poetry competition organized by the Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association of New York. With the publication of The Hawk in the Rain in both London and New York, Ted Hughes' literary career was launched. From 1957 to 1959, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath lived in the United States where Plath taught at Smith College and Hughes at the University of Massachusetts. It was while living in the U.S. that Hughes met the artist Leonard Baskin who first suggested a sequence of poems based on a mythical crow figure and who later became a frequent collaborator on a number of fine press, artist's editions of Hughes' work. After a camping trip across the U.S. in the summer of 1959, Ted and Sylvia spent several weeks in residence at the Yaddo artists' colony in upstate New York. There Hughes worked on the poems that would later be collected in his second collection, Lupercal. They returned to England in December and the following Spring Hughes learned that he had won both the Somerset Maugham Award and the Hawthorndon Prize (the latter for his second collection, Lupercal). A short time later their first child, Frieda, was born. Partly to support his new family, Hughes began a series of radio talks for the BBC's Listening and Writing program (later collected in Poetry in the Making), and in August the Hughes' moved into "Court Green," a former rectory in the village of North Tawton in Devon. In January 1962 their second child, Nicholas , was born. 3 Ted Hughes papers, 1940-1999 Manuscript Collection No. 644 During the fall of 1962 Hughes began seeing the artist Assia Wevill and soon after he and Sylvia Plath separated. While suffering from depression the following winter, Plath took her own life. After Sylvia Plath's suicide, Hughes published a series of children's books, How the Whale Became (1963), The Earth-Owl and Other Moon People (1963), Nessie the Mannerless Monster (1964), and in 1965 he began serving as a judge for the National Children's Poetry Competition. He also, along with Daniel Weissbort, founded the journal Modern Poetry in Translation devoted to introducing the work of foreign language poets to English readers. Also in 1965, Hughes published Ariel, the posthumous collection of Sylvia Plath's poems upon which her reputation as a poet largely rests. In January 1967 Hughes and Assia Wevill's daughter Shura was born. In 1967 Hughes published Wodwo, a collection of new poems, short stories, and a single radio play that he had previously recorded for the BBC. He also worked on a variety of other projects including serving as co-director of Poetry International, a major literary festival that included leading poets from around the world. He also collaborated with the director Peter Brook on a stage adaptation of Seneca's Oedipus for the National Theatre Company and translated a selection of poems by Yehuda Amichai (published in 1968).