Ted Hughes

Crow was Ted Hughes's fourth book of poems for adults and a pivotal moment in his writing career. In it, he found both a structure and a persona that gave his vision a new power and coherence. A. Alvarez wrote in the Observer, 'Each fresh encounter with despair becomes the occasion for a separate, almost funny, story in which natural forces and creatures, mythic figures, even parts of the body, act out their special roles, each endowed with its own irrepressible life. With Crow, Hughes joins the select band of survivor-poets whose work is adequate to the destructive reality we inhabit.'

This multi-award winning collection, the first from Ted Hughes, has at its heart the mixture of beauty and violence in the natural world. Dedicated to Sylvia Plath, Hawk in the Rain is a stunning collection of poems on the themes of competition and the struggle for survival. Hughes would go on to become Britain's Poet Laureate in 1984 until his death in 1998. Including many of Hughes' best-known poems, such as 'The Jaguar', 'The Thought-Fox' and 'Wind' - now stapes of British poetry anthologies - Hawk in the Rain is the foundation of Hughes' reputation as one of the twentieth-century's greatest poets. This beautifully designed edition forms part of a series of ten titles celebrating Faber's publishing over the decades.

Formerly Poet Laureate to Queen Elizabeth II, the late Ted Hughes (1930-98) is recognized as one of the few contemporary poets whose work has mythic scope and power. And few episodes in postwar literature have the legendary stature of Hughes's romance with, and marriage to, the great American poet Sylvia Plath. The poems in Birthday Letters are addressed (with just two exceptions) to Plath, and were written over a period of more than twenty-five years, the first a few years after her suicide in 1963. Some are love letters, others haunted recollections and ruminations. In them, Hughes recalls his and Plath's time together, drawing on the powerful imagery of his work--animal, vegetable, mythological--as well as on Plath's famous verse. Countless books have discussed the subject of this intense relationship from a necessary distance, but this volume--at last--offers us Hughes's own account. Moreover, it's a truly remarkable collection of poems in its own right.