Book description
Published in 1957, Hawk in the Rain was Ted Hughes's first
collection of poems. It won the New York Poetry Centre First
Publication Award, for which the judges were W. H. Auden, Stephen
Spender and Marianne Moore, and the Somerset Maugham Award, and it was
acclaimed by every reviewer from A. Alvarez to Edwin Muir. When Robin
Skelton wrote, 'All looking for the emergence of a major poet must buy
it', he was right to see in it the promise of what many now regard as
the most important body of work by any poet of the twentieth century.
Ted Hughes (1930-1998) was born in Yorkshire. His first book,
The Hawk in the Rain, was published in 1957 by Faber and Faber and was
followed by many volumes of poetry and prose for adults and children.
He received the Whitbread Book of the Year for two consecutive years
for his last published collections of poetry, Tales from Ovid (1997)
and Birthday Letters (1998). He was Poet Laureate from 1984, and in
1998 he was appointed to the Order of Merit.
