Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes's remarkable sequence of twenty-four tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 1997 and was celebrated in The Times by Michael Hofmann as 'one of the great works of the century'. Tim Supple and Simon Reade have taken ten tales from Hughes's version of the greatest poem of classical inspiration and transformed them for the stage. Erotic, elegant, violent and magical, this dramatisation of Tales from Ovid realises the immense power of Hughes's original text, which is already recognised as a literary landmark.

A powerful version of the Latin classic by England's late Poet Laureate, now in paperback. When it was published in 1997, Tales from Ovid was immediately recognized as a classic in its own right, as the best rendering of Ovid in generations, and as a major book in Ted Hughes's oeuvre. The Metamorphoses of Ovid stands with the works of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton as a classic of world poetry; Hughes translated twenty-four of its stories with great power and directness. The result is the liveliest twentieth-century version of the classic, at once a delight for the Latinist and an appealing introduction to Ovid for the general reader.

A collection of poetry addressed to Hughes's late wife, poet Sylvia Plath, reexamines the psychological breakdown that led to both some of her greatest poems and to her untimely death. Reprint.

Ted Hughesin "syntymäpäiväkirjeet" on osoitettu Sylvia Plathille, amerikkalaiselle runoilijalle, jonka kanssa Hughes oli naimisissa. Runomuotoiset kirjeet on kirjoitettu kahdenkymmenenviiden vuoden ajanjakson aikana, ensimmäiset vain muutama vuosi Palthin itsemurhan jälkeen. Intiimit ja avoimet kirjeet käsittelevät laajalti psykologista draamaa, joka johti sekä Palthin parhaiden runojen syntyyn että hänen itsemurhaansa. Tämä on ensimmäinen kerta, kun Hughes itse kertoo tapahtuneesta tragediasta.

An adaptation by the Poet Laureate of Racine's play of the same name. Phedre burns with passion for Hippolytus, her stepson. His father, Theseus, is made to believe that it is Hippolytus who is lusting after Phedre, and begs Neptune to kill his son, which he does before discovering the truth.

Sylvia Plath began keeping a diary as a young child. By the time she was at Smith College, when this book begins, she had settled into a nearly daily routine with her journal, which was also a sourcebook for her writing. Plath once called her journal her "Sargasso," her repository of imagination, "a litany of dreams, directives, and imperatives," and in fact these pages contain the germs of most of her work. Plath's ambitions as a writer were urgent and ultimately all-consuming, requiring of her a heat, a fantastic chaos, even a violence that burned straight through her. The intensity of this struggle is rendered in her journal with an unsparing clarity, revealing both the frequent desperation of her situation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons. Written in electrifying prose, The Journals of Sylvia Plath provide unique insight, and are essential reading for all those who have been moved and fascinated by Plath's life and work.

Lorca's Blood Wedding is a classic of twentieth-century theatre. The story is based on a newspaper fragment which told of a family vendetta and a bride who ran away with the son of the enemy family. Lorca uses it to investigate the subjects which fascinated him: desire, repression, ritual, and the constraints and commitments of the rural Spanish community in which the play is rooted. Ted Hughes's version stays close in spirit and letter to the original Spanish. With marvellous directness, he fused Lorca's vision to his own, and the result is a powerful poetic text which captures all the violence and pathos of the play for an English-speaking audience.

A collection of prose pieces by the Poet Laureate, on literary matters and on writers as diverse as Emily Dickinson, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Walter de la Mare, T. S. Eliot, Wilfred Owen and Sylvia Plath. Hughes also expresses concerns about education, the environment, and the arts in general.