Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath

Gill, J. (2011) Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. In: Gifford, T. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Ted Hughes. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, pp. 53-66. ISBN 9780521197526 (doi: 10.1017/CCOL9780521197526.005)

Abstract

When Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath first met in 1956 both were already, in Hughes’s words, ‘curious’ about the other. Both had acquaintances in common and both were publishing poetry in the various literary magazines that proliferated in Cambridge at this time. Two early Plath poems, ‘Epitaph in Three Parts’ and ‘“Three Caryatids Without a Portico” by Hugh Robus. A Study in Sculptural Dimensions’, the first that she published in England, appeared in the Winter 1956 issue of Chequer. Two years earlier, Hughes had published some of his poems, ‘The Jaguar’ and ‘Casualty’, in the same magazine. Several of his friends were frequent contributors. Plath’s poems were mocked in a ‘broadsheet of literary comment’ which Hughes’s ‘poetic gang’ (his words) produced. And although this particular review was penned by Hughes’s friend Daniel Huws, it is clear from the former’s subsequent recollection of events that this was to some degree a collaborative enterprise with Huws acting, at least implicitly, on behalf of ‘our group’.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Gill, Professor Jo
• Authors: Gill, J.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• ISBN: 9780521197526