My mother, Sylvia Plath, wrote an enormous number of letters during her all-too-short lifetime: letters to family and friends about family and friends; about work, to promote work, to submit work; as well as writing her Journals (published by Faber, UK, and Anchor Books, US.) I am in awe of her output, and the way in which she recorded so much of her life so that it was not lost to us. Through publication of her poems, prose, diaries, and now her collected letters, my mother continues to exist; she is best explained in her own words, capturing a real sense of the era at the time, and her passion for literature and life – and for my father, Ted Hughes.
It has always been my conviction that the reason my mother should be of interest to readers at all is due to my father, because, irrespective of the way their marriage ended, he honoured my mother’s work and her memory by publishing Ariel, the collection of poems that launched her into the public consciousness, after her death. He, perhaps more than anyone, recognised and acknowledged her talent as extraordinary. Without Ariel, my mother’s literary genius might have gone unremarked forever. Although, by ensuring her work got the attention it surely deserved, my father also initiated the castigation that was to hound him for the rest of his life.
It seems to me that, as a result of their profound belief in each other’s literary abilities, my parents are as married in death as they once were in life.
Frieda Hughes
2017