Philandering husband or one of England's greatest poets?

Both, actually. Ted Hughes, England's poet laureate from 1984 until his death in 1998, suffered the same fate as his famous first wife, poet Sylvia Plath. Their personal history often skewed reactions to their work.

Ryan Hibbett considers Hughes's image problem in a recent article in Twentieth Century Literature, the premier journal of modern literature. A doctoral student in English, Hibbett is interested in "the way art and artists are categorized," he says, "particularly the distinction between 'high art' and popular culture."

For years Hughes struggled mightily to keep his work separate from his private life—but he couldn't control his own image as a writer, Hibbett says. He had a "torn identity as a creator of poems...and a product of the popular imagination."

On the one hand, popular books and movies have dissected every inch of the Plath/Hughes relationship, usually presenting Hughes as victimizer and Plath as victim. (Hughes has often been blamed for Plath's suicide in 1963, shortly after they separated.)

On the other hand, many literary critics tend to dismiss any pop culture interest in Hughes's life as illegitimate. As a result, some reacted negatively to Birthday Letters, Hughes's last book of verse, which finally addressed his relationship with Plath.

Hibbett looks at how the posthumous publication of Hughes's Collected Poems (2003) sought to validate his literary greatness. Ironically, perhaps, this massive volume undid some of the things Hughes did to control the way his work was presented to the public. For example, it left out the drawings and stories he sometimes produced to accompany his poems. And, as a complete collection, it included poems he never chose to publish for a general audience.

Its overall effect, Hibbett says, was a "tidying up of the messier aspects" of Hughes's career. The collection gave a stamp of authenticity to Hughes's work, which allowed reviewers to celebrate his "solitary artistic genius" and to place him within the pantheon of literary giants.

—by Marilyn Davis