With just two exceptions, these 88 poems, in the form of an intimate and candid 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.

Sylvia Plath's correspondence, addressed chiefly to her mother, from her time at Smith College in the early 1950s up to her suicide in London in February 1963. In addition to her capacity for domestic and writerly happiness, these letters also hint at her potential for deep despair.

In the Poet to Poet series, a contemporary poet advocates a poet of the past or present whom they have particularly admired. By their selection of verses and their critical reactions, the selectors offer intriguing insights into their own work. Here, Ted Hughes selects Sylvia Plath.

Ted Hughes's Birthday letters , published in 1998, was greeted with astonishment and acclaim. In Ariel's gift , Erica Wagner provides a commentary to the poems, pointing the reader towards the events that shaped them, and, crucially, showing how they draw upon Plath's own work.

A brilliant, elegantly reasoned meditation on the nature of biography. Examines the biographies of Sylvia Plath.