Frieda Hughes

“He was a hectic, unprincipled bird, but it was impossible not to love him.” From poet and painter Frieda Hughes, a memoir of love, obsession, and feathers. When Frieda Hughes moved to the depths of the Welsh countryside, she was expecting to take on a few projects: planting a garden, painting, writing her poetry column for The Times (London), and possibly even breathing new life into her ailing marriage. But instead, she found herself rescuing a baby magpie, the sole survivor of a nest destroyed in a storm—and embarking on an obsession that would change the course of her life. As the magpie, George, grows from a shrieking scrap of feathers and bones into an intelligent, unruly companion, Frieda finds herself captivated—and apprehensive of what will happen when the time comes to finally set him free. With irresistible humor and heart, Frieda invites us along on her unlikely journey toward joy and connection in the wake of sadness and loss; a journey that began with saving a tiny wild creature and ended with her being saved in return.

A Magpie Memoir

George

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath: Drawings is a portfolio of pen-and-ink illustrations created during the transformative period spent at Cambridge University, when Plath met and secretly married poet Ted Hughes, and traveled with him to Paris and Spain on their honeymoon, years before she wrote her seminal work, The Bell Jar. Throughout her life, Sylvia Plath cited art as her deepest source of inspiration. This collection sheds light on these key years in her life, capturing her exquisite observations of the world around her. It includes Plath’s drawings from England, France, Spain, and New England, featuring such subjects as Parisian rooftops, trees, and churches, as well as a portrait Ted Hughes. Sylvia Plath: Drawings includes letters and diary entries that add depth and context to the great poet’s work, as well as an illuminating introduction by her daughter, Frieda Hughes.

Sylvia Plath: Drawings

Out of the Ashes

Sylvia Plath, Her Drawings

In 1956 Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother, Aurelia, 'I feel I'm developing a kind of primitive style of my own which I am very fond of. Wait 'til you see . . . ' Throughout her life Plath cited art as her deepest source of inspiration; yet while her writing is celebrated around the world, her drawings are little known. This publication brings together drawings from 1955 to 1957, the period she spent on a Fulbright fellowship at Newnham College, Cambridge. During this time she met and married in secret the poet Ted Hughes, travelling with him on honeymoon to Paris and Spain before their return to the US in June 1957. Plath's drawings in pen and ink are exquisitely observed moments from this period in her life, and include among their subjects Parisian rooftops, trees, churches and a portrait of Ted Hughes. The collection sheds light on these key years in Plath's life and includes letters and a diary entry about her art, as well as an illuminating introduction by her daughter, Frieda Hughes.

The daughter of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes presents a collection of works that breaks past silences to reveal her experiences of losing her father to cancer, fighting bulimia, weathering the legacy of her mother's suicide, enduring her stepmother's rejection, and working through three marriages and two divorces. 10,000 first printing.

Poems

Forty-Five

New terrain is marked in Frieda Hughes's brilliant new collection, Waxworks. In it, Hughes has conceived and created a kind of poetic wax museum. She peoples it with figures from myth and legend, the Bible and world history, the famous and the infamous. Diverse personalities, such as Rasputin and Cinderella, Medea and Lazarus, Houdini and Lady Macbeth, have been reborn of their old selves in Waxworks. Hughes imbues them with new life in contemporary terms; they experience the universal truths of love and pain and vanity that affect us all. As this volume proves, Hughes never flinches from difficult subjects and experiences. Like Wooroloo, Frieda Hughes's debut collection, the poems of Waxworks will haunt a reader's imagination.

Waxworks

Welcome to the meticulously observed world of Frieda Hughes. It is a world of tangible materiality constantly on the brink of change, a world populated with foxes and fire, fathers and lovers, mothers and birdmen--a world that is ultimately combustible, fragile, fearsome, and elegiacally beautiful. Hughes maps the landscape, both within and without, in language possessed of an almost painterly sensitivity and a sublime mastery of craft. The self she depicts is one who is tested by loss, danger, betrayal, and abandonment, yet one who is transformed through experience into a world beyond nihilism and despair a place that makes possible truth, strength of character, and the redemptive power of love.

Wooroloo

A new collection of unusually intimate poems by the highly acclaimed poet Frieda Hughes, Daughter of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

Stonepicker and The Book of Mirrors

'A charming diary of life with a tame magpie - despite George's bad behaviour, it will render corvid lovers (like me) green with envy!' Katherine May, author of Wintering A Times Best Book to Watch out for in 2023 A Guardian Books highlight for the year ahead Then, just in time, before I swung the spade again, I saw, right by the blade and camouflaged by the leaves on the ground, a magpie chick. It squatted belligerently, peering up at me with miniature magpie fury. George. When Frieda Hughes moved to the depths of the Welsh countryside, she was expecting to take on a few projects: planting a garden, painting and writing her poetry column for the Times. But instead, she found herself rescuing a baby magpie, the sole survivor of a nest destroyed in a storm - and embarking on an obsession that would change the course of her life. As the magpie, George, grows from a shrieking scrap of feathers and bones into an intelligent, unruly companion, Frieda finds herself captivated - and apprehensive of what will happen when the time comes to finally set him free.

Poems and Paintings

Alternative Values

Frieda Hughes' first collection of poems extends the distinctive imaginative territory of her paintings and children's books. In the fairytale world of Wooroloo, light defines dark while dark extends its shadows into the brightest of lives. Fire is the dominant element of these poems: as in her recent paintings, created phoenix-like from the bushfire which destroyed her studio in Wooroloo, her once paradisal home in Australia. Her fables cast light on two worlds, giving a mythic dimension to a contemporary world of husbands and wives, hospital patients and social outcasts, at the same time as they depict with an artist's keen eye the particular nature of beast, fish and fowl.

Ed Levine

Chronicles the adventures of Miranda, an apprentice witch, who lives with her two witch aunts and an assortment of unusual animals.

Getting Rid of Aunt Edna

The Book of Mirrors tries to let us see ourselves as we really are. We should have the answers to all our own questions, but if we don't see ourselves clearly - faults included - our answers can be distorted by vanities or ego. The Book of Mirrors examines the ideas of argument, resolution and the acceptance of what cannot be changed. Frieda Hughes was born in London in 1960, grew up in Devon, and after living in various parts of England and Australia now lives on the Welsh Borders. She wrote and painted from an early age, and for many years has been a painter and children's writer.

The Book of Mirrors

Frieda Hughes's fables cast light on two worlds, giving a mythic dimension to contemporary life - depicting with an artist's keen eye the particular nature of beast, ﬁsh and fowl. Stonepicker is Frieda Hughes's second collection, now out of print in this edition but all the poems are included in Out of the Ashes (Bloodaxe Books, 2018).

Frieda Hughes

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