Books by Ted Hughes

This volume replaced Ted Hughes's Selected Poems 1957-1981. It contains a larger selection from the same period, to which are added poems from more recent books, uncollected poems from each decade of Ted Hughes's writing life, and some new work. Another notable feature is the inclusion of poems from his books for younger readers, What is the Truth? and Season Songs.

This critical magnum opus, unprecedented in Shakespeare studies for its scope and daring, is nothing less than an attempt to show the Complete Works - dramatic and poetic - as a single, tightly integrated, evolving organism.

This collection brings together the poems Ted Hughes wrote for children throughout his life. Raymond Briggs brings to the collection two hundred original drawings that capture the wit, gentleness and humanity of these poems and make this a book any reader - child and adult - will return to again and again.

The Iron Wolf, the Iron WolfStands on the world with jagged fur. The rusty Moon rolls through the sky. The iron river cannot stir. The iron wind leaks out a cryAnimals of air, land and sea are brilliantly imagined in this perfect introduction for young readers to the work of Ted Hughes.

First published in 1984, this book of prose-linked animal poems won both the Guardian Children's Fiction Award and the Signal Poetry Award. This new, illustated edition remains 'a very beautiful book: God and his son go to visit mankind and ask a few simple questions . . . the poems are pure enchantment' (The School Librarian).

Ted Hughes wrote a series of stories for children from the early 1960s through until 1995 about how the world, and the creatures in it, came into being. Meet the Polar Bear whose obsession with her snowy white fur is so great that she can only live in a landscape surrounded by her own reflection;

A very ordinary boy. Nobody noticed him, he was just like everyone else. But Fred knew he was different. He just didn't know quite how different. And when he did.... Well, what then?

Originally the medieval bestiary or book of animals set out to establish safe distinctions - between them and us - but Hughes's poetry works always in a contrary direction: showing what man and beast have in common, the reservoir from which we all draw. Alice Oswald's selection is arranged chronologically, with an eye to different books and styles, but equally to those poems that embody animals, rather than just describe them. Some poems are here because, although not strictly speaking animal, they become so in the process of writing; and in keeping with the bestiary tradition there are plenty of imaginary animals - all concentratedly coming about their business.The resulting selection is subtly responsive to a central aspect of Hughes's achievement, while offering room to some wonderful overlooked poems, and to 'those that have the wildest tunes.'

In 1984 Ted Hughes was made Poet Laureate. Since then, he has fulfilled his duties by writing a number of poems celebrating important royal occasions. It also contains a section of notes, throwing light on the context and genesis of each poem.

'Other folks get so well known,And nobody knows about my own,'Have you met my sister Jane? She's a great big crow! My Grandpa is an owler and Grandma knits jerseys for wasps! And my other Granny is an octopus...Meet Aunt Flo, Brother Bert and more extraordinary family members in Ted Hughes' irresistible Meet My Folks, his first book for children, illustrated beautifully by George Adamson.

Some poems will be more of a challenge than others, but all will be treasured once they have become part of the memory bank. This edition is part of a series of anthologies edited by poets such as Don Paterson and Simon Armitage and features an attractive new design to complement an anthology of classic poems.

'The Calder valley, west of Halifax, was the last ditch of Elmet, the last British Celtic kingdom to fall tothe Angles. For centuries it was considered a more or less uninhabitable wilderness, a notorious refuge forcriminals, a hide-out for refugees. Then in the early 1800s it became the cradle for the Industrial Revolution intextiles, and the upper Calder became "e;the hardest-worked river in England"e;. Throughout my lifetime, since1930, I have watched the mills of the region and their attendant chapels die. Within the last fifteen years the endhas come. They are now virtually dead, and the population of the valley and the hillsides, so rooted for so long,is changing rapidly.' Ted Hughes, Preface to Remains of Elmet (1979)Ted Hughes's remarkable 'pennine sequence' celebrates the area where he spent his early childhood. It mixessocial, political, religious and historical matter - a tapestry rich in the personal and poetic investment of alandscape that both creates and is inured to its people, whose moors 'Are a stage for the performance of heaven./ Any audience is incidental.' Remains of Elmet is one of Hughes's most personal and enduring achievements.

First published in 1983, River celebrates fluvial landscapes, their creatures and their regenerative powers.Inspired by Hughes's love of fishing and by his environmental activism, the poems are a deftly and passionatelyattentive chronicle of change over the course of the seasons. West Country rivers predominate ('The West Dart'and 'Torridge'), but other poems imagine or recall Japanese rivers or Celtic rivers, and 'The Gulkana' exploresan ancient Alaskan watercourse. At its core the sequence rehearses, in various settings, from winter to winter,the life-cycle of the salmon.All this, too, is stitched into the torn richness,The epic poiseThat holds him so steady in his wounds, so loyal to his doom,so patientIn the machinery of heaven.from 'October Salmon'

Ffangs lives with the other vampires on Vampire Island, but he is different from the rest - he can't stand the sight of blood!When he arrives in London, everyone is too frightened to listen when he explains that he only wants to be human. And soon he finds himself alone in Buckingham Palace to face Thomas the Vampire Hunter . . .

Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, is tired of being told that she doesn't exist. In this crackling, lolloping story in verse, Ted Hughes describes how she sets out on the road to London for an audience with the Queen...

A stunning new version of a much-loved children's classic.

This collection of eleven evocative, accessible and funny stories for children of 5+ tells how a particular animal came to be as it is now. The Whale grew up in God's vegetable patch but was banished to sea when he became too large and crushed all His carrots; the Polar Bear was lured to the North Pole by the other animals who were jealous that she always won the annual beauty contest; the Hare has asked the moon to marry him but can never stretch his ears high enough to hear her reply; the Bee must sip honey all day long to sweeten the bitter demon that runs through his veins . . . each story is a delight for reading alone or aloud.

At the outset of his career Ted Hughes described letter writing as 'excellent training for conversation with the world', and he was to become a prolific master of this art. This selection begins when Hughes was seventeen, and documents the course of a life at once resolutely private but intensely attuned to others. It is a fascinatingly detailed picture of a mind of genius as it evolved through an incomparably eventful life and career.

Offers a selection from the author's numerous translations, together with (versions of Paul Eluard, or of Yves Bonnefoy), and excerpts from essays and letters. This title selects his versions from a variety of ancient texts - "The Tibetan Book of the Dead", "Aeschylus", "Euripides", "Ovid", "Seneca" and "Racine".

"In a series of chapters built round poems by a number of writers including himself . He makes the whole venture seem enjoyable, and somehow urgent . ' Times Literary Supplement

Mankind must put a stop to the dreadful destruction by the Iron Man and set a trap for him, but he cannot be kept down. Then, when a terrible monster from outer space threatens to lay waste to the planet, it is the Iron Man who finds a way to save the world.

The Oresteia comprises three of the greatest plays of all time: Agamemnon, The Cheophori and The Eumenides.

Originally published in 1979, Moortown Diary is the updated version of Ted Hughes's acclaimed Devon farming sequence, written over a period of several years during which he was spending almost every day outside, either gardening or farming. The introduction and notes (added in 1989) sketch in the background from which these remarkable poems emerged as an improvised verse journal, sparely edited, coalescing spontaneously on the page. 'Moortown Diary keeps its eye firmly on the creatures behind the language. It's written in the style of Hughes's play translations: very swift and bright and urgent and speakable...Hughes strips away the protective layers - the soundproofed ears, the double-glazed eyes - that prevent us making contact with anything outside ourselves. Right now, I can't think of anything more important than that kind of poem. Because we're not just here to think about literature. We're here to try to wake up.' Alice Oswald, The Guardian'It grips your heart, and your intestines, like a vice from the first page. He makes language as physical as a bruise, and in these poems beauty and tenderness blend with violence.' John Carey, Sunday Times'The Moortown sequence includes some of Hughes's finest poems...They are like no other poems I have read, with a degree of intensity, sanity and grace that he has never equalled.' Anthony Thwaite, Times Literary Supplement

An adaptation by the Poet Laureate of Racine's play of the same name. Phedre burns with passion for Hippolytus, her stepson. His father, Theseus, is made to believe that it is Hippolytus who is lusting after Phedre, and begs Neptune to kill his son, which he does before discovering the truth.

This volume contains six plays suitable for performance by children. Four were published under the title "The Coming of the Kings and Other Plays", and the other two are "Orpheus", previously only published in America, and "The Pig Organ" published for the first time.

When Michael Hofmann and James Lasdun's ground-breaking anthology After Ovid (also Faber) was published in 1995, Hughes's three contributions to the collective effort were nominated by most critics as outstanding. He had shown that rare translator's gift for providing not just an accurate account of the original, but one so thoroughly imbued with his own qualities that it was as if Latin and English poetwere somehow the same person. Tales from Ovid, which went on to win the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, continued the project of recreation with 24 passages, including the stories of Phaeton, Actaeon, Echo and Narcissus, Procne, Midas and Pyramus and Thisbe. In them, Hughes's supreme narrative and poetic skills combine to produce a book that stands, alongside his Crow and Gaudete, as an inspired addition to the myth-making of our time.

A collection of twenty-eight poems grouped to represent the four seasons.

First published in 1962 this selection, made by the poets themselves, draws on the volumes they had published up to that date and forms a valuable introduction to their work.