"£100 & a butt of sack yearly"

Ted Hughes & Andrew Motion

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According to biographer Elaine Feinstein, Ted Hughes's marriage to the American poet Sylvia Plath marked his entire life, and he never completely recovered from her suicide in 1963. As a poet he was successful with publications such as The Hawk in the Rain (1957), Lupercal (1960), which won the Somerset Maugham Award (1960) and the Hawthornden Prize (1961), and Crow (1970), a series of story-poems. Hughes was offered the post of laureate in December 1984. In January 1985, he wrote to his friend Alvin Alvarez that since his appointment, he now had several million people a week telling him how to write, instead of the usual 30 or 40. On display is the first edition of his first book, The Hawk in the Rain, the US edition of Moon-whales, illustrated by Leonard Baskin, and Birthday Letters, his controversial sequence of lyrics cast as continued conversations with his wife Sylvia Plath. Hughes died of cancer on 28 October 1998.

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Ted Hughes, The Hawk in the Rain (London: Faber and Faber, 1957. Bra. PR 6058.U37 H3), Moon-whales and Other Moon Poems (New York: Viking Press, 1976. Cen. PR 6058 U37 M6) and Birthday Letters (London: Faber and Faber, 1998. Cen. PR 6058.U37 B57)

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By writing poems, and filling various posts as editor of Poetry Review (1981-83), Poetry Editor and Editorial Director at London publishers Chatto & Windus (1983-89), Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and Chairman of the Arts Council of England's Literature Panel since 1996, Andrew Motion (b. 1952- ) has championed poetry. In 1999 he succeeded Ted Hughes as laureate. Of the post he wrote: 'There's no formal requirement to write anything, but an expectation - derived from precedent - that major events in the Royal calendar will be tackled in verse. My own plan has been to develop a 'doing' side to the job, which concentrates on education. And to place the 'Royal poems' in a picture of 'national' ones.' The salary is now £5000, with a re-introduced 'butt of sack' from the Sherry Institute of Spain. On display are some of his works.

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Andrew Motion, The Pleasure Steamers (Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1978. Cen. PR 6063.O842 P57), The Price of Everything (London: Faber and Faber, 1994. Cen. PR 6063.O842 P7) and as editor, Here to Eternity: An Anthology of Poetry (London: Faber and Faber 2001. Cen. PR 1175 HH66)