Birthday Letters Ted Hughes- English Combined WJEC

• Married Sylvia in 1956
• Plath Killed Herself in 1963
• Plath revealed her side of the relationship & her state of mind in her poems- especially Arial & her correspondance-  Letters Home publshed by her mother
• Plath= COnfessional Poet
• Hughes Poetry= Largley Impersonal-Focused on world of nature & its creatures
• 1995- a dozen poems written for Assia Wevill
• Hughes & Wevill started affair in 1962- Still married to Plath
• Wevill=Suicide same way as Plath in 1969
• Wevills death= 'inevitable'
• "She had been on that track most of her life. But Assia's was avoidable. er death was utterly within her powe, and it was an outcome of her reactio to Sylvia"

1998= Birthday Letters

Began writing after Plaths suicide- took 25 yr to write

Plaths view was aleady familiar= Hughes the villan

Birthday Letters= attempat to adjust public record= Breaking the silence

To see it as the other side of the story or last word= too simple