Picture Section

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(© Harry Ogden, deceased)

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Childhood home now and then: Mount Zion Primitive Methodist Chapel towering over 1 Aspinall Street, in the roof of which is the skylight of the attic bedroom from which Ted looked out on Scout Rock.

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Childhood home now and then: 1 Aspinall Street as it is today. (© Jonathan Bate)

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Ted as a schoolboy. (© Stuart Clarke/Writer Pictures)

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Siblings: Gerald, Olwyn, Ted. (Unidentified studio photographer, rephotographed by Jonathan Bate by kind permission of Olwyn Hughes)

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Mirrored in the heart: Ted photographed by Olwyn. (© Olwyn Hughes)

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Deep England overgrown: the pond of the pike. (© Steve Ely)

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During National Service: mother and son. (© Stuart Clarke/Writer Pictures)

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Family home in student days and thereafter: the Beacon as it is today. (© Jonathan Bate)

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Sylvia Plath about to set of for Smith College in 1950 (with mother Aurelia and brother Warren). (© Giovanni Giovannetti/Effigie/Writer Pictures)

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Cambridge days: in June 1952, at the May Ball with Carina. (© Edna Wholey)

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Cambridge days: graduation in summer 1954. (© Stuart Clarke/Writer Pictures)

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Cambridge days: the first and only edition of student poetry magazine Saint Botolph’s Review, at the launch party for which Ted first met Sylvia on Saturday 25 February 1956. (© Tom Bate)

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Honeymoon: Sylvia and Ted photographed by Warren in Paris in 1956. (© Warren Plath, courtesy of Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College)

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Honeymoon: Ted drawn by Sylvia. (© Estate of Sylvia Plath)

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Newly married: Sylvia with typewriter on a Yorkshire drystone wall in September 1956. (© Elinor Klein, courtesy of Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College)

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Newly married: studio portrait during residence in Eltisley Avenue, Cambridge, late in 1956. (© Peter Lofts Photography/Ramsey and Muspratt Archive)

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In the bosom of the family: Sylvia with Ted’s family at the Beacon, William Hughes (left) and Uncle Walt (right) standing behind, Sylvia sitting next to Ted’s mother. (© Harry Ogden, deceased)

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At work in the apartment on Willow Street, Boston, in 1958. (© Black Star, courtesy of Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College)

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On the rocks at Winthrop, after visiting Otto Plath’s grave in May 1959. (© Everett Collection/REX)

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Boston literary life: Robert Lowell, who described Ted’s poem ‘Pike’ as a masterpiece. (© British Library Board/Fay Godwin Archive)

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Of to see America: Ted photographed by Sylvia, during a roadside picnic in Wisconsin in July 1959. (© Estate of Sylvia Plath, courtesy of Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College)

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(© Rosalie Thorne McKenna Foundation, courtesy of Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, via National Portrait Gallery, London)

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Faber poets: Louis MacNeice, Ted Hughes, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender in June 1960, the year of the publication of Ted’s second collection of poetry, Lupercal. (© Mark Gerson/Bridgeman Images)

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Court Green, North Tawton, discovered by Ted and Sylvia in 1961 (seen here photographed in 1972). (© David Willis McCullough, courtesy of University of Maryland)

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Family: with baby Frieda in Knole Park, Kent, in 1960. (© Ann Davidow-Goodman (Mrs Hayes))

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Family: Sylvia with Frieda and Nicholas among the daffodils at Court Green in 1962. (© Siv Arb/Writer Pictures)

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Family: Ted with Frieda and Nicholas at Doonreaghan in 1966. (© Jane Bown/Camera Press)

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Assia Wevill. (© David Wevill)

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Susan Alliston. (© Richard Hollis)

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Frieda on the doorstep of Court Green with Shura in push-chair. (© Celia Chaikin)

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(© Jonathan Bate)

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Lumb Bank, which Ted first tried to buy in 1963, and eventually bought in 1969, as it is today. (© Eddie Jacob Photography)

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Elm trees and Morris Traveller at Court Green. (© David Willis McCullough, courtesy of University of Maryland)

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Seneca’s Oedipus: Irene Worth as Jocasta and John Gielgud as Oedipus in the National Theatre production, directed by Peter Brook, at the Old Vic in 1968. (© TopFoto)

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Brenda Hedden in 1965. (© Estate of Trevor Hedden, courtesy of Brenda Hedden)

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The Iron Man as rock musical: Ted at the Young Vic with Pete Townshend of The Who in 1993. (© Alex Lentati/Associated Newspapers/REX)

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(© Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum, via National Portrait Gallery, London)

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Orghast at Persepolis: Ted in Iran. (© Stuart Clarke/Writer Pictures)

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Second marriage: Nick, Carol, Frieda and Ted on the moors. (© Stuart Clarke/Writer Pictures)

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Ted and Carol. (© Bill Brandt Archive)

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Ted and Jill. (courtesy of Jill Petchesky © Estate of Barbara Trentham)

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Jennifer Rankin, Australian poet. (© Hazel de Berg Collection of Photographs, National Library of Australia)

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Emma Tennant, Scottish novelist. (© Jane Bown/The Observer/TopFoto)

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Mighty opposites: Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes at a party in June 1977. (© Mark Gerson/Bridgeman Images)

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Top Withens: the alleged original of Wuthering Heights, to which Ted and Sylvia were driven by Uncle Walt in 1956 (here photographed by Fay Godwin in 1977 for Remains of Elmet). (© British Library Board/Fay Godwin Archive)

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The Fisher King: Ted on the first day of trout-fishing season at Wistland Pond, Devon, April 1986. (© Nick Rogers/REX)

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Frieda and Nicholas Hughes at the unveiling of the blue plaque in memory of their mother at 3 Chalcot Square, Primrose Hill, in 2000. (© Dr Renate Latimer, courtesy of Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College)

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Letter Home: Great War memorial at Paddington railway station, a key influence on ‘Black Coat: Opus 131’. (© Robin McMorran)

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With steelhead on the Dean River, British Columbia, 1995. (© Ehor Boyanowsky)

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Birthday Letters revealed, January 1998. (© News UK, photographed by Tom Bate)

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The memorial stone on Dartmoor, photographed in July 2015. (© Tom Bate)