Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life Hardcover – Deckle Edge, October 13, 2015
Author: Jonathan Bate ID: 0062362437

Review

“An incisive, humane and deeply absorbing account of Hughes’s life and work.” (New York Times)

“An excellent biography: compulsively readable, elegantly assembled… and sensitive to the many aspects of Hughes’s grand and complicated character.” (Christopher Wiman, Wall Street Journal, front page review)

“An intelligent, even donnish work of criticism that connects the poems to the life…” (Washington Post)

“…Bate has provided new depth to Ted Hughes’ biography…” (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

“Imaginative, comprehensive…worthy of becoming the standard life of Hughes. Illuminating, elegant, and excellent.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred review))

“Scrupulous and lucid… [Hughes] was a dedicated and brilliantly sharp-eyed recorder of material that might or might not one day get hammered into poetry, and even the tiny pieces that Bate gives us glitter.” (The Guardian)

“Illuminating.” (Daily Mail (London))

About the Author

Jonathan Bate is a biographer, critic, and broadcaster. His many books include The Genius of Shakespeare, described by Sir Peter Hall as "the best modern book on Shakespeare"; a biography of the poet John Clare, which won Britain's two oldest literary awards, the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Prize; Soul of the Age, an intellectual life of Shakespeare, which was runner-up for the Biography Prize of PEN America; and The Song of the Earth, a pioneering book on poetry and the environment. He is also the author of a novel, The Cure for Love, and the hit one-man play for Simon Callow, Being Shakespeare. A fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, he is provost of Worcester College and professor of English literature at Oxford University. Married to the author Paula Byrne, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his services to higher education and was knighted in 2015 for his services to literary scholarship.

Hardcover: 672 pagesPublisher: Harper (October 13, 2015)Language: EnglishISBN-10: 0062362437ISBN-13: 978-0062362438 Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.6 x 9 inches Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies) Best Sellers Rank: #17,655 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #2 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Genres & Styles > Poetry #67 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Criticism & Theory #79 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Movements & Periods
I have waited for this book a long time! As a devotee of the poetry of both Plath and Hughes, and a biography addict, I was hoping for something that would move beyond the partisanship and bias that seems to hound so much work on either, particularly Hughes, and something that would be a writerly life, along the lines of Charlotte Bronte: A Writer’s Life by Rebecca Fraser — that is, something that did not skirt the problematic life but which did not sensationalize it, and linked any biographical information to the literary development. I was not disappointed.

Although the Hughes estate has accused Bate of violating his purview (a "literary" life), I think he has managed to produce just that. He has done so in the face of a huge obstacle, which is the blocking by the estate of his permission to quote anything but small fragments of Hughes’s writing.

Bate’s sophistication begins with the very title of this book: "An Unauthorized Life." Although the most immediate and literal meaning is that permission from the estate was revoked and therefore the biography is not authorized in that fashion, Bate also believes that Hughes sought in many ways to live outside the confines of what society "authorized" in terms of his behaviors and responses, preferring to be led by his inner compass and sense of his inner mythical life. Finally, Bate says that the unpublished archival materials, which are massive, are part of the unauthorized life, the life behind the scenes of the published, "authorized" poet and writer. This sophisticated use of language and of thinking about a life is apparent throughout the book and is one of its primary delights.
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