Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-mwx4w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-17T07:20:15.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - The problem of biography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2011

Joanny Moulin
Affiliation:
Aix-Marseille University
Terry Gifford
Affiliation:
Bath Spa University
Get access

Summary

All biographies are impossible, but Ted Hughes’s is more impossible than others. One of the reasons for this is that he was made a character in the life-story of Sylvia Plath. Witness the title of one of the two Ted Hughes biographies to date: Her Husband: Hughes and Plath – A Marriage. Of course, Diane Middlebrook came to Hughes from an interest in Ann Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Her approach testified to the construction of a personage called ‘Ted Hughes’ that took place early on in his own lifetime, originating in Sylvia Plath’s poems and her extremely detailed journals and letters, which are one of the main documentary sources for any Hughes biographer. The earlier biography, Elaine Feinstein’s Ted Hughes; The Life of a Poet, while still relying heavily on Plath’s writings, had already attempted to broaden the scope of what was then known by using first-hand correspondence and conversations with people who had been personally acquainted with the poet. Of course, huge new sources of information were discovered with the opening in the year 2000 of the Ted Hughes Archives in the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library of Emory University in Atlanta. This consists of a major part of Hughes’s letters, drafts, notebooks and drawings, and it provides ample material for a literary biography of Ted Hughes that could not but lead to a genuine reappraisal of the figure of both the man and the poet. The full achievement of this remains impossible, however, because part of the archive remains sealed off, withdrawn from public inspection until the year 2023.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×