http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/196604520

Lover of unreason : Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's rival and Ted Hughes's doomed love

This volume is a biography of German-born Assia Wevill (1927-1969). She is known for her romantic relationship with English poet Ted Hughes. Wevill killed herself and also her four-year-old daughter. Six years earlier, Hughes's wife Sylvia Plath had also committed suicide. The authors describe the early life of thrice-married Wevill. Born in Berlin and raised in Tel Aviv, she married to a British soldier in order to gain a British passport, Wevill was, as the authors demonstrate, a smoldering femme fatale, highly intelligent, witty and talented. While the authors don't whitewash Wevill's volatile, self-absorbed personality or her serial adulteries, they do contradict the widespread impression that she was the initial seducer of Hughes. An important book for Hughes scholars, primarily for the authors' exclusive 1996 interview with the poet, in which he identified the poems he wrote alluding to Wevill after her death. Newly revealed letters and interviews reinforce previous accounts of Hughes's sexual attraction and the dedicated philandering that drove two women to suicide.

Open All Close All