Hawk Roosting (Author Biography)

Author Biography

On August 17, 1930, Hughes was born in Mytholomroyd, a town located in the West Riding district of Yorkshire; he was the third child of William Henry and Edith Farrar Hughes. Mytholomroyd is situated in a valley deep within the Pennine Mountains beneath a large cliff, and later in his life Hughes depicted the scene in his writings and related his experiences exploring the surrounding moors and hunting small game with his brother. When Hughes was seven years old, his family moved to Mexborough, a town in South Yorkshire, where he began attending school and was encouraged by his teachers to write poetry. Hughes was awarded a scholarship to Cambridge University in 1948, but he opted to serve in the Royal Air Force (RAF) before pursuing higher education. He served two years as a ground wireless mechanic at a remote RAF radio station, where, by his own admission, he spent most of his time reading Shakespeare. In 1951 Hughes began his studies in English literature at Cambridge’s Pembroke College, which he continued for two years before spending his third and final year at Cambridge engaged in the study of archaeology and anthropology. After leaving college, Hughes resided in London and Cambridge, where he held a variety of jobs, including stints as a rose gardener, schoolteacher, and zoo attendant. During this period, Hughes cultivated a number of friendships with literary figures of the time and published several poems in literary periodicals. In 1956 he met American poet Sylvia Plath, and after a courtship that lasted only four months, the two were married on June 16. Plath introduced Hughes to contemporary American poetry and encouraged him to submit his manuscript for The Hawk in the Rain to an American literary contest. Hughes’s manuscript was selected out of 287 entries by the judges, noted authors W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and Marianne Moore, and was published in both the United States and England in 1957.

From 1957 until 1959 Hughes and Plath lived in the United States, where they both became college instructors — Hughes at the University of Massachusetts and Plath at her alma mater, Smith College — before deciding against academic careers. The couple returned to England in December, 1959, and in April, 1960 their daughter Frieda was born in London. In January, 1962 the couple’s son Nicholas Farrar was born in a small mid-Devon village, where the couple resided in a cottage. Although reportedly the Hugheses’ marriage was rewarding in many ways, there were difficulties, and they ultimately separated and planned to divorce. Plath returned to live in London, where she committed suicide in February, 1963. Hughes was devastated, and wrote little poetry during the three years following Plath’s death. Hughes carefully edited and promoted his late wife’s poetry and journals, and is primarily responsible for the success of Plath’s posthumously published works. During the late 1960s, Hughes again began to write prolifically, and published several works of poetry and prose before the close of the decade. In March, 1969, Hughes’s companion, Assia Gutman, killed herself, taking her young daughter with her; Hughes’s sorrow over this loss and the earlier loss of Plath is reflected in his works. Hughes married his second wife, Carol Orchard, in 1970 and took up residence on a farm in Devon, where he began raising sheep and cattle. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Hughes continued to publish poetry, prose, drama, literary criticism, and works for children, as well as editing the works of Plath and other writers. Hughes’s works have garnered numerous awards throughout his career; he received the Guinness Poetry Awards first prize in 1958, a Guggenheim fellowship in 1959, the Somerset Maugham Award in 1960, the Premio Internazionale Taormina in 1973, and the Queen’s Medal for Poetry in 1974. In addition to these awards, Hughes had conferred upon him the Order of the British Empire in 1977, and in 1984 he was named Great Britain’s Poet Laureate.

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