Her Husband: Hughes and Plath: A Marriage - Softcover

Wood Middlebrook, Diane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349115923 ISBN 13: 9780349115924

Publisher: Abacus, 2006

Synopsis

A biography of Ted Hughes that provides new insights into one half of one of the 20th Century's most significant literary couples.

About this title

Review:

..it is Ted Hughes, the mired bogeyman of Western Feminism, whom Middlebrook does not want to fail. And he would not be disappointed. (Literary Review)

Sure to be the gold standard. Astutely reasoned, fluidly written and developed with psychological acuity. . . Middlebrook breaks new ground. . . a balanced assessment of the legacy of a troubled marriage and the works of art it engendered." Publishe (Michico Kakutani, NEW YORK TIMES)

"Joining the recent spate of books about Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, Middlebrook's is sure to be the gold standard. Astutely reasoned, fluidly written and developed with psychological acuity. . . Middlebrook breaks new ground in tracing the couple's interactive creative relationship, suggesting that neither would have produced his or her best poetry without the other. . . a balanced assessment of the legacy of a troubled marriage and the works of art it engendered." Publisher's Weekly ('Middlebrook is a thorough and careful guide through this brief but endlessly intriguing marriage. Her knowledge of the poet s’ work, her ability to trace currents and themes, and her singular vision in synthesizing it all is downright mystifying’)

The Boston Globe ('The Narrative of HER HUSBAND cannot help but fascinate, providing new information and insight. . . The results are considerably persuasive’)

Synopsis:

Ted Hughes married Sylvia Plath in 1956, at the outset of their brilliant careers. Plath's suicide six and a half years later, for which many held Hughes accountable, changed his life, his closest relationships, his standing in the literary world and brought new significance to his poetry. In this stunning new biography of their marriage, Diane Middlebrook renders a portrait of Hughes as a man, as a poet and as a husband, haunted - and nourished - his entire life by the aftermath of his first marriage. Middlebrook presents Hughes as a complicated, conflicted figure: sexually magnetic, fiercely ambitious, immensely caring and shrewd in business. She argues that Plath's suicide, though it devastated Hughes and made him vulnerable to the savage attacks of Plath's growing readership, ultimately gave him his true subject - recreating himself for posterity through his marriage to Sylvia Plath and his struggles within his own historical circumstances.

About this edition

• Publisher: Abacus
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0349115923
• ISBN 13: 9780349115924
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384