British Library acquires major Ted Hughes archive

LONDON (Reuters) - The British Library has acquired a major archive of poet Ted Hughes containing manuscripts that give insight into how he wrote "Birthday Letters," his last poetic work exploring his relationship with Sylvia Plath.

The archive comprises 220 files and boxes of documents, letters, journals and personal diaries, and cost the British Library 500,000 pounds ($880,000). The library plans to make the acquisition fully accessible by the end of 2009.

At the heart of the archive are documents relating to Birthday Letters, a collection of poems charting Hughes's relationship with wife Plath, who committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30.

Critics blamed Hughes for driving the American poet Plath to despair, and their relationship has been the source of public fascination fueled by a 2003 Hollywood movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig as the troubled couple.

Birthday Letters was published in 1998, the year of Hughes's death, and went on to sell 500,000 copies worldwide and won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry and the Whitbread Book of the Year prize among other accolades.

"These manuscripts include the variant drafts of published poems, which reveal in fascinating detail the successive stages of the creative process over a period of 25 years, as well as numerous unpublished poems," the library said on Wednesday.

Other highlights include working drafts and pages of detailed thoughts and reflections relating to "Capriccio," Hughes's volume of poems about another important woman in his life, Assia Wevill.

Wevill also committed suicide in 1969, at the same time killing her four-year-old daughter by the poet.

The collection also includes Hughes's personal diaries which span the 1950s to the 1990s, recording daily events, accounts of dreams and reflections on his family and his past, along with fragments of poems and writings on historical figures.

There are also fishing journals, underlining the importance of the sport to Hughes's life and work.

A notebook containing early autograph manuscript drafts of Birthday Letters, revealing that Hughes had originally planned to call the volume "The Sorrows of the Deer," will be on display in The Sir John Ritblat Gallery: Treasures of the British Library from October 15.

The library also plans special events to mark the 10th anniversary of Hughes's death on October 28, with the release of a new CD featuring the poet discussing and reading from his work and a tribute to him on October 20.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)