Birthday Letters

''Birthday Letters'' is a 1998 poetry collection by English poet and children's writer Ted Hughes. Released only months before Hughes's death, the collection won multiple prestigious literary awards, including the Whitbread Book of the Year, the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection, and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry in 1999. This collection of eighty-eight poems is widely considered to be Hughes's most explicit response to the suicide of his estranged wife Sylvia Plath in 1963, and to their widely discussed, politicized, and "explosive" marriage. Prior to ''Birthday Letters'', Hughes had only explicitly mentioned Plath once before, in the poem "Heptonstall Cemetery" from his 1979 collection '' Remains of Elmet''.

The cover

The cover of ''Birthday Letters'' is artwork created by Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath's daughter Frieda. The cover is made up of violent reds and vibrant yellows, with just a minuscule amount of blue peaking through against a dark background. The rest of the book, including the dust jacket and Hughes's name were all in blue, which was Hughes's own decision. In the last poem of the book "Red", he begins by writing, "Red was your colour," ending the poem, and thus the entire collection, with the line "But the jewel you lost was blue."

Background

Until the publication of this book, 35 years after Plath's suicide, Hughes had said and published nearly nothing about his relationship and life with Plath. When it was discovered that he had infidelities while with Plath and had destroyed some of Plath's works after her death, some critics depicted him as a monster and Plath as a victim. In one instance, Hughes's name was chipped off from Plath's tombstone in Yorkshire.

The "Ted Hughes controversy" concerned his possible role in Plath's suicide and subsequent attempts at controlling the finished products of her poetry. The speculation resulted in extra-literary attention on Plath and Hughes and, consequently, their works as poets. Poems including " The Blue Flannel Suit" directly address their relationship, and many are directly addressed to Plath herself.

Plath and Hughes's relationship

Hughes and Plath met for the first time on 25 February 1956, at a party in Cambridge. Plath had been studying in England on a government grant, and wanted to meet Hughes after being impressed with some of the poems she'd read in a magazine. The two quickly found interest in one another, going as far as sending poems back and forth with each other. On 16 June 1956 (the annual celebration of Bloomsday), just months after their first meeting the two poets married and honeymooned in Benidorm.

A year later Hughes and Plath relocated to Massachusetts so Plath could teach at her alma mater, Smith College. With Plath finding trouble in both working on her poetry and teaching, the couple eventually moved back to London by the end of 1959. On 1 April 1960, Plath gave birth to their first daughter, Frieda Hughes, and on 17 January 1962 she gave birth to their second child and first son Nicholas Hughes

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