Book description
Alcestis is the story of a king, Admetus, who is able to escape
death because his wife, Alcestis, has volunteered to die in his place.
Ted Hughes's version goes beyond translation to an inspired rethinking
of the story in terms of his own vision of human suffering. Although
he started working on this piece in 1993, he did not finish until a
few months before his death in 1998. It is the culmination of an
extraordinarily productive period of work, which saw the publication
of Tales from Ovid (1997), Birthday Letters (1998) and The Oresteia (1999).
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.
