Few figures loom larger over 20th-century British literature than Ted Hughes, whose gift for crafting brilliant autobiographical poetry was matched with a comparable talent for translation as well as for writing children's books and memorable correspondence. In this "incisive, humane and deeply absorbing" (New York Times) biography—which includes 24 pages of photographs—Jonathan Bate peels back the many layers of a writer who achieved universal acclaim, but remained tarnished by the suicide of his first wife, Sylvia Plath. Drawing upon Hughes's vast unpublished archive of journals and notes, Bate presents a rounded view of Hughes, a renaissance man with a magnetic personality and insatiable appetite for friendship, love, and life.

"An excellent biography: compulsively readable, elegantly assembled ... and sensitive to the many aspects of Hughes's grand and complicated character."—Wall Street Journal

"Remarkable.... One of the very best biographies in years."—Joyce Carol Oates