University Communications Emory's Ted Hughes Collection Opens To Scholars With April 8 Event In 1997 Emory made an acquisition for special collections in Woodruff Library that was considered an international literary coup: The university had purchased all of British poet laureate Ted Hughes' papers. It has been widely reported since that the collection was some 2.5 tons of materials including scrap books, letters, photographs and hundreds of drafts of poems, many unpublished. The monumental task of cataloguing the collection, and subsequent additions to the initial cache, is finally nearing an end. The Ted Hughes Collection will officially open with an April 8 celebration featuring Irish poet Paul Muldoon reading a verse tribute he has written in honor of Hughes, who passed away in the fall of 1998. The event will take place at 8 p.m. in Tull Auditorium of Emory Law School, 1301 Clifton Rd. on the Emory campus. Frieda Hughes, the daughter of Hughes and Sylvia Plath, also will be in attendance. The reading by Muldoon will be followed by a reception. For more information, call 404-727-6887. The archive already has attracted Hughes scholars from around the country, and some Emory students have looked at the collection from the direction of his late wife Sylvia Plath's career, since there are fragments of her unpublished work present as well. "It's an extraordinary resource for Emory's own students, but it also is a demonstration world-wide of Emory's commitment to literary scholarship of the first order," says Stephen Enniss, curator of literary collections at Woodruff Library. "Materials are readily available to scholars that show Hughes' own creative development as well as the details of his life story that have been so intertwined with that of Plath." Not surprisingly, much of the interest in the collection, and certainly much of what has been written about it in the media, centers on Hughes' relationship with Plath. Hughes said little about that relationship following Plath's 1963 suicide and was an extremely private person, so it is remarkable that he chose to "lay himself bare," according to Enniss. The collection shows how closely the writers worked together, often sharing the same piece of paper, and later correspondence with long-time friend Lucas Myers reveal many of Hughes' thoughts. "I continue to be impressed by how joined they were by a commitment to dual careers," says Enniss. "While their marriage did disintegrate at the end, they were together for six years, and they were tremendously supportive of each other's careers. Even after her death he supported her by making her unpublished work available." It is fitting that Muldoon will speak at the opening since Hughes clearly influenced Muldoon. In fact, some early work of Muldoon's is present in the archive through a handful of letters he wrote to Hughes. "Muldoon was coming of age at a time when Ted was the leading English poet," says Enniss. "As he was developing his voice, he was reading Hughes' collections The Hawk in the Rain and Lupercal." Enniss also cites the Muldoon poem addressed to Hughes titled "Herm" that declares "it was you I took for my mark." Muldoon currently teaches at Princeton University and holds the poetry chair at Oxford University. In interesting side note to the opening, a bottle of "The Laureate's Sherry" sherry will be offered for silent auction at a reception the night before. Since the first British poet laureate was named in 1616, the Restoration poet Ben Jonson, payment has been a "butt of canary wine" to be paid annually. Consequently, Hughes received some 700 bottles during his tenure. His widow, Carol, has graciously donated a number of them to Emory. This bottle of "The Laureate's Choice" comes from the William & Humbert cellars in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, and bears a label designed by Hughes. Each bottle also is hand numbered and signed by him. The auction of this piece of English literary history will benefit the literary collections of the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory. For more information on the auction, call 404-727-4885.
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