Editing Ted Hughes (section)

===Career===
In 1951 Hughes initially studied English at Pembroke College under M.&nbsp;J.&nbsp;C. Hodgart, an authority on [[ballad]]ic forms. Hughes felt encouraged and supported by Hodgart's supervision, but attended few lectures and wrote no more poetry at this time, feeling stifled by literary academia and the "terrible, suffocating, maternal octopus" of literary tradition.<ref name="NDB"/><ref name="Sagar8">Sagar (1978), p.&nbsp;8.</ref> He wrote, "I might say, that I had as much talent for [[F. R. Leavis|Leavis]]-style dismantling of texts as anyone else, I even had a special bent for it, nearly a sadistic streak there, but it seemed to me not only a foolish game, but deeply destructive of myself."<ref name="NDB"/> In his third year, he transferred to [[Anthropology]] and [[Archaeology]], both of which would later inform his poetry.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/11820/9/11820_%27Throttle%20College%27_%20Ted%20Hughes%27s%20Cambridge%20Poetry.pdf |title='Throttle College'? Ted Hughes's Cambridge Poetry |last=Reddick|first=Yvonne|author-link=Yvonne Reddick |publisher=University of Central Lancashire |date=September 2015|access-date=23 October 2021}}</ref> He did not excel as a scholar, receiving only a third-class grade in Part I of the Anthropology and Archaeology Tripos in 1954.<ref name="Bellp5">Bell (2002), p.&nbsp;5.</ref><ref>'Cambridge Tripos', ''Times'', 19 June 1954, p.&nbsp;3.</ref> 

His first published poetry appeared in ''Chequer''.<ref name="Bellp5"/> A poem, "The little boys and the seasons", written during this time, was published in ''[[Granta]]'', under the pseudonym Daniel Hearing.<ref name="Sagar9">Sagar (1978), p.&nbsp;9.</ref>

After university, living in London and Cambridge, Hughes had many varied jobs including working as a rose gardener, a nightwatchman, and a reader for the British film company [[Rank Organisation|J. Arthur Rank]]. He worked at [[London Zoo]] as a washer-upper,<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/tobias-hill-tales-from-decrypt-99601.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220526/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/tobias-hill-tales-from-decrypt-99601.html |archive-date=26 May 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Tobias Hill: Tales from decrypt|date=9 August 2003|newspaper =The Independent|access-date=23 June 2017}}</ref> a post that offered plentiful opportunities to observe animals at close quarters.<ref name="Bellp5"/> 

On 25 February 1956,<ref>Jonathan Bate (2015). ''Ted Hughes: the unauthorised life'' p.&nbsp;98.</ref> Hughes and his friends held a party to launch ''[[St. Botolph's Review]]'', which had a single issue. In it, Hughes had four poems. At the party, he met American poet [[Sylvia Plath]], who was studying at Cambridge on a [[Fulbright Scholarship]].<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2010/apr/15/sylvia-plath-ted-hughes "Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes talk about their relationship"], ''The Guardian'', 15 April 2010. Excerpt taken from [[British Library]]'s sound archive, published on the audio CD ''The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath''.</ref> She had already published extensively, having won various awards, and had come to the party especially to meet Hughes and his fellow poet Lucas Myers. Hughes and Plath felt a great mutual attraction, but they did not meet again for another month, when Plath passed through London on her way to Paris. She visited him again on her return three weeks later.{{citation needed|date=January 2016}}

{{Quote box|align=right|bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right
|quote =<poem>
Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
</poem>
|source =The last four stanzas of "The Thought Fox" <br/>from ''[[The Hawk in the Rain]]'', 1957<ref name="poetryarchive.org">{{cite web|url=http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=13821|title=The Thought Fox - poetryarchive.org|access-date=11 April 2017}}</ref>}}
Hughes and Plath were married on 16 June 1956, at [[St George the Martyr, Holborn]], four months after they had first met. They chose the date, [[Bloomsday]], in honour of Irish writer [[James Joyce]].<ref name="NDB"/> Plath's mother was the only wedding guest. The couple spent most of their honeymoon at [[Benidorm]], in [[Province of Alicante|Alicante]] on Spain's [[Costa Blanca]].<ref name="Bellp6">Bell (2002), p.&nbsp;6.</ref>

Hughes's biographers note that Plath did not tell him about her history of depression and suicide attempts until much later.<ref name="NDB"/> Reflecting later in ''Birthday Letters'', Hughes commented that early on he could see chasms of difference between himself and Plath, but that in the first years of their marriage they both felt happy and supported, avidly pursuing their writing careers.<ref name="Bellp6"/>

On returning to Cambridge, they lived at 55 Eltisley Avenue. That year they each had poems published in ''[[The Nation]]'', ''[[Poetry (magazine)|Poetry]]'', and ''[[The Atlantic]]''.<ref name="Sagar11">Sagar (1978), p.&nbsp;11.</ref> Plath typed up Hughes's manuscript for his collection ''Hawk in the Rain'', which won a competition run by the Poetry centre of the [[Jewish Community Centre|Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association of New York]].<ref name="Bellp6"/> The first prize was publication by [[HarperCollins|Harper]]. Hughes gained widespread critical acclaim after the book's release in September 1957, including a [[Somerset Maugham Award]]. The work favoured hard-hitting [[trochee]]s and [[spondee]]s reminiscent of [[Middle English]] — a style he used throughout his career — over the more genteel latinate sounds.<ref name="NDB"/>

The couple moved to the United States in 1957 so that Plath could take a teaching position at her alma mater, [[Smith College]]. During this time, Hughes taught at the [[University of Massachusetts Amherst|University of Massachusetts]], Amherst. In 1958, they met artist [[Leonard Baskin]], who would later illustrate many of Hughes's books, including ''Crow''.<ref name="Bellp6"/> 

The couple returned to England in 1959, staying for a short while back in [[Heptonstall]] and then finding a small flat in [[Primrose Hill]], London. They were both writing: Hughes was working on programmes for the BBC as well as producing essays, articles, reviews, and talks.<ref name="Bellp7">Bell, Charlie (2002) ''Ted Hughes'', Hodder and Stoughton, p.&nbsp;7.<!--ISSN/ISBN needed--></ref> During this time, he wrote the poems that would later be published in ''Recklings'' (1966) and ''Wodwo'' (1967). 

In March 1960, his book ''Lupercal'' was published, and it won the [[Hawthornden Prize]]. He found he was being labelled as the poet of the wild, writing only about animals.<ref name="NDB"/> Hughes began to seriously explore myth and esoteric practices including shamanism, alchemy and Buddhism, with [[The Tibetan Book of the Dead]] being a particular focus in the early 1960s.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Rácz|first=István&nbsp;D.|title=The Realm Between Life and Death in Ted Hughes|date=1991|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41273855|journal=Hungarian Studies in English|volume=22|pages=121–126|jstor=41273855|issn=1217-0283}}</ref> He believed that imagination could heal dualistic splits in the human psyche, and poetry was the language of that work.<ref name="NDB"/>

Hughes and Plath had two children, [[Frieda Hughes]] (b. 1960) and [[Nicholas Hughes]] (1962–2009). In 1961, they bought the house [[Court Green]], in [[North Tawton]], Devon. 

In the summer of 1962, Hughes began an affair with [[Assia Wevill]], who had been subletting the Primrose Hill flat with her husband. Under the cloud of his affair, Hughes and Plath separated in the autumn of 1962. Plath moved back to London and set up life in a new flat with the children.<ref>{{cite book |last=Kirk |first=Connie Ann |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NBlJYGHVESwC&pg=PR7 |title=Sylvia Plath: A Biography |date=2004 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-313-33214-2 |pages=xx }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last= |first= |date=10 April 1999 |title=Haunted by the ghosts of love |url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/apr/10/tedhughes.sylviaplath |access-date=19 August 2022 |website=The Guardian }}</ref>

Letters written by Plath between 18 February 1960 and 4 February 1963, unseen until 2017, accuse Hughes of physically abusing her, including an incident two days before she miscarried their second child in 1961.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/11/unseen-sylvia-plath-letters-claim-domestic-abuse-by-ted-hughes?CMP=fb_gu|title=Unseen Sylvia Plath letters claim domestic abuse by Ted Hughes|first=Danuta|last=Kean|date=11 April 2017|work=[[The Guardian]]|access-date=11 April 2017}}</ref>