Ted Hughes

Timmy was a paddle-boat, sound as a gong,Not a worm in his timbers, fresh paint all over.He was hale as a whale and twice as strong,And he sailed on the peaceful river. So begins the enchanting tale of Timmy the Tug and his subsequent adventures as he escapes his moorings and explores the high seas. With his heart in the...

Right from the start he is dressed in his best - his blacks and his whites. Little Fauntleroy - quiffed and glossy, A Sunday suit, a wedding natty get-up, Standing in dunged straw For older readers than the first two volumes of Collected Animal Poems, animal life is seen afresh through the diversity and imaginative energy of this collected volume....

Celebrating 50 years of The Iron Man. Part modern fairy tale, part science-fiction myth, The Iron Man describes the unexpected arrival in England of a mysterious giant metal man who wreaks havoc on the countryside by attacking the neighbouring farms and eating all their machinery. A young boy called Hogarth befriends him, and Hogarth and the extraordinary being end up...

The Iron Man isn't scary—he's just very, very hungry... It's not until he starts chomping on fence posts and tractors that he comes to the attention of the angry farmers, who trap him in a hole with the help of a little boy called Hogarth. He resurfaces again, upturning picnickers. So Hogarth comes up with a plan—it turns out that...

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 award-winning illustrated edition of Ted Hughes' classic tale in paperback. Part modern fairy tale, part science fiction myth, The Iron Man describes the unexpected arrival in England of a mysterious giant "metal man" who wreaks havoc on the countryside by attacking the neighbouring farms and eating all their machinery. A young boy called Hogarth befriends him, and together, Hogarth...

With just two exceptions, these 88 poems, in the form of a narrative, are addressed to Sylvia Plath, the American poet to whom Ted Hughes was married. They were written over a period of more than 25 years, the first a few years after her suicide in 1963. Intimate and candid, they cover the whole period of their relationship, from...

Crow was Ted Hughes's fourth book of poems for adults and marked a pivotal moment in his writing career. In this collection, Hughes discovered both a structure and a persona that elevated his vision to new heights of power and coherence. A. Alvarez wrote in the Observer, 'Each fresh encounter with despair becomes the occasion for a separate, almost funny,...

'A superb modern myth, a fable for children to grow up on' Independent 'A fiercely imagined, hugely challenging fantasy.' Guardian The Iron Woman has come to take revenge on mankind. Full of the power and fantastic imagination of his famous book The Iron Man, this sequel from the late Poet Laureate is a passionate and brilliant cry against the relentless...

The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. Where had he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. 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...

'Reckoned one of the greatest of modern fairy tales' Observer'Hughes has never written more compellingly.' Robert Nye, The TimesMankind must put a stop to the dreadful destruction caused by the Iron Man. A trap is set for him, but he cannot be kept down. Then, when a terrible monster from outer space threatens to lay waste to the planet, it...

Lupercal was Ted Hughes's second collection, containing some of his most brilliant animal poetry. It confirmed his reputation as a major talent in British poetry. "Hughes has found his own voice, created his own artistic world and has emerged as a poet of the first importance. What Ted Hughes has done is to take a limited, personal theme and, by...

This multi-award-winning collection, the first from Ted Hughes, has at its heart the mixture of beauty and violence in the natural world. Dedicated to Sylvia Plath, The Hawk in the Rain is a stunning collection of poems on the themes of competition and the struggle for survival. Hughes would go on to become Britain's Poet Laureate in 1984 until his...

The Calder valley, west of Halifax, was the last ditch of Elmet, the last British Celtic kingdom to fall to the Angles. For centuries it was considered a more or less uninhabitable wilderness, a notorious refuge for criminals, a hide-out for refugees. Then in the early 1800s it became the cradle for the Industrial Revolution in textiles, and the upper...

The poem we are told was originally intended as a film scenario. Ted Hughes has that sure poetic instinct that heads implacably for the particular instances rather than ideas or abstraction; he has an especial talent for evoking the visual particular... Ted Hughes has produced a strange bastard form that works because he has such an acute sense of the...

Lorca's Blood Wedding is a classic of twentieth-century theatre. The story is based on a newspaper fragment which told of a family vendetta and a bride who ran away with the son of the enemy family. Lorca uses it to investigate the subjects which fascinated him: desire, repression, ritual, and the constraints and commitments of the rural Spanish community in...

This anniversary edition with a new foreword by Marina Warner celebrates fifty years since the original publication of Crow (1970), which marked a pivotal moment in Ted Hughes's writing career. Growing out of an invitation by Leonard Baskin to make a book with him about crows, Hughes found both a structure and a persona that gave his vision a new...

Hughes is as broad as Ovid and as subtle, as violent and as erotic, as elegant and as folksy - and often all at the same time. It is simply a beautiful match. Tales from Ovid is the greatest poem of Classical inspiration probably since the Cantos. It will live as one of the great works of our century. Michael...

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets in our literature. Emily Dickinson (1830-86)...

The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff.Where had he come from? Nobody knows.How was he made? Nobody knows. 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...

Forty years after it was first published, Ted Hughes's Flowers and Insects, Some Birds and a Pair of Spiders is presented in a beautifully redesigned edition with a new introduction by the nature writer Tim Dee. The sixteen poems gathered here brim and bristle with the life Hughes generates from the absolute attention he commits to whatever it is he...

What has happened to the lost art of memorising poetry? Why do we no longer feel that it is necessary to know the most enduring, beautiful poems in the English language by heart? In his introduction, Ted Hughes explains how we can overcome the problem by using a memory system that becomes easier the more frequently it is practised. The...

Why is itThe roustabout Rooster, raging at the dawnWakes us so early?A warrior king is on fire!His armour is all crooked daggers and scimitarsAnd it's shivering red-hot - with rage!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:...

This collection brings together the poems Ted Hughes wrote for children throughout his life. They are arranged by volume, beginning with those for reading aloud to the very young, progressing to the poems in Under the North Star and What is the Truth?, and ending with Season Songs, which Hughes remarked was written within hearing of children. Raymond Briggs brings...

This enthralling tour de force of literary criticism, 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. Hughes supports his thesis with erudition and a painstakingly close analysis of language, plots, and characters. A multitude of dazzling insights, such as only...