SOURCE: "Ted Hughes, 68, a Symbolic Poet and Sylvia Plath's Husband, Dies," in New York Times, October 30, 1998, p. 1.

[In the following obituary, Lyall discusses Hughes's life and death from cancer at the age of 68.]

Ted Hughes, the British poet who was known as much for his doomed marriage to the American poet Sylvia Plath as for his powerful, evocative poetry, replete with symbolism and bursting with dark images of the Devonshire countryside in which he lived, died Wednesday, his publisher said. He was 68.

Hughes, Britain's poet laureate, had been suffering from cancer for about 18 months, but had told only his closest friends and had never discussed details of his illness, said Matthew Evans, the chairman of Faber and Faber, Hughes's publisher. "He felt that being ill was, for him, very private," Evans said. Hughes died at his home in North Tawton.

It was his illness, and his sense that...