Ted Hughes Summary

Ted Hughes (1930-1998) was an eminent English poet who led a resurgence of English poetic innovation starting in the late 1950s. He was named poet laureate in 1985.Ted Hughes was born in 1930 in the Y... Read more

Ted Hughes's poetry for adults has made him one of the most important British writers in the second half of the twentieth century. When his work first appeared in the late 1950s, it struck many reader... Read more

Critical Essay by A. E. Dyson [The Hawk In The Rain] is, to my mind, the most distinguished volume of verse by a poet of Mr. Hughes's generation to have appeared, and it notably escapes the va... Read more

Critical Essay by Mary Kinzie No patently sexual or scatological motifs are present in Ted Hughes's book, Moon-Whales, but the poems here suffer … from trying to be cutely hard-headed&#... Read more

Critical Essay by Christopher Reid After [his] youthful, somewhat amateur-carpenter exercises in stanza-form, [Hughes] has abandoned this in his later work for a narrative mode that is largely his ow... Read more

Critical Essay by Martin Booth The importance and validity of place to the English poet has long been of prime importance…. For Ted Hughes, not surprisingly, it is the West Riding of Yorksh... Read more

[In the following obituary, Miller discusses Hughes's career and life upon his death from cancer.] British poet laureate Ted Hughes, whose failed marriage to the tortured American poet Sylvi... Read more

[In the following review of The Hawk in the Rain, Merwin praises Hughes's young talent for its originality and intelligence.] Ted Hughes is a young English poet; The Hawk in the Rain is his ... Read more

[In the following review, Holkeboer lauds Hughes's Gaudete.] Praise for Hughes has been grudging for some reason. Called the finest poet of his generation (the competition scarcely threatens... Read more

Critical Essay by Donald F. McKay SOURCH: "Animal Music: Ted Hughes's Progress in Speech and Song," in English in Studies in Canada, Vol. VII, No. 1, Spring, 1981, pp. 81-92. [... Read more

[In the following essay, Haberstroh analyzes the changing landscape in Hughes's Remains of Elmet, and traces the historical forces which bring about the change.] In Remains of Elmet, a volum... Read more

[In the following essay, Holbrook traces some of Hughes's theories about Shakespeare and strongly disagrees with the poet's interpretation.] Obviously, Shakespeare had problems with s... Read more

[In the following review, Firchow gives reserved praise for the poems in Hughes's Rain-Charm for the Duchy and Other Laureate Poems.] Since succeeding to the office of Poet Laureate in 1984,... Read more

[In the following review, Roberts discusses the suffering and death in Hughes's poetry from New Selected Poems, 1957–1994.] Woody Allen once said that nature was one big restaurant. P... Read more

[In the following review, Levi lauds Hughes's translations of Ovid's poetry.] It must be 100 years since Maurice Baring remembered in print how an Eton master, enquiring what class he... Read more

Will there ever be a time where the world will live in peace, stripped from all wars and grudges? Ted Hughes partially answers this question through his self-written, extremely evocative poem - `Thist... Read more