British Library acquires Hughes archive
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The British Library has acquired a major archive of poet Ted Hughes.
The archive comprises 220 files and boxes of documents, letters, journals and personal diaries, and cost 500,000 pounds ($1.25 million).
The library plans to make the acquisition fully accessible by the end of 2009.
At the heart of the archive are documents relating to Birthday Letters, a collection of poems charting Hughes's relationship with wife Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30.
Critics blamed Hughes for driving the American poet to despair.
Their relationship has been the source of public fascination fuelled by a 2003 Hollywood movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig as the troubled couple.
Birthday Letters was published in 1998, the year of Hughes's death.
It went on to sell 500,000 copies worldwide and won the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry and the Whitbread Book of the Year prize among other accolades.
- Reuters
