FROM THE PUBLISHER

When Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters was published in 1998, it was greeted with astonishment and acclaim, immediately landing on the bestseller list. Few suspected that Hughes had been at work for a quarter of a century on this cycle of poems addressed to his first wife, Sylvia Plath. In Ariel's Gift, Erica Wagner explores the destructive relationship between these two poets through their lives and their writings. She provides a commentary to the poems in Birthday Letters, showing the events that shaped them and, crucially, showing how they draw upon Plath's own work. 8 pages of b/w photographs.

Author Biography: Erica Wagner is literary editor of The Times of London, where selections of Ariel's Gift first appeared. She is the author of a story collection, Gravity.

FROM THE CRITICS

Thomas Lynch

Both narratively engaging and scholastically comprehensive.

Times Literary Supplement