Birthday Letters: Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters are an extraordinary collection of poems, addressed, with just two exceptions, to Sylvia Plath—the American poet to whom he was married. Written over a period of more than 25 years, the first poem was composed shortly after her tragic suicide in 1963 and the remaining poems offer a unique and deeply personal insight into their relationship, the intense psychological struggle that inspired her greatest works, and ultimately contributed to her untimely death.