"A masterly biography." - San Francisco Chronicle "Jonathan Bate is a dazzling scholar, and in TED HUGHES he sheds new light on the poet and his times.Mr. Bate embodies.the touchstone of good biography: the complete sympathy of complete detachment." - Sara Wheeler, in "The Best Biographies of 2015," Wall Street Journal "Remarkable.one of the very best biographies in years." - Joyce Carol Oates "A vigorous biography.

Bate, a professor of literature, gives sustained attention to Hughes's poems, substantiating the poet's own view that "as an imaginative writer, my only capital is my own life." - The New Yorker "Scrupulous and lucid. [Hughes] was a dedicated and brilliantly sharp-eyed recorder of material that might or might not one day get hammered into poetry, and even the tiny pieces that Bate gives us glitter." - The Guardian "Magisterially respectful of Hughes.An uncompromising biographer [who] hasn't been swayed by interested parties.In Hughes's life, with its echoes of Greek tragedy, Bate finds grist for a new perspective on his work." - Christopher Benfey, The Atlantic "This scrupulous biography acknowledges and explicates Hughes's brilliance as one of the twentieth century's great poets.Hughes deserved a fine biographer, and in Bate he got one.

" - Daily Beast "What Jonathan Bate has written, capaciously, arrestingly, is a kind of tragedy.Bate often veers close to the poet's singular perspective.He reminds us Ted Hughes was, still and all, a marvelous poet: firstly, then fitfully, and then in a blaze near the end, and that the greatness in the work draws power from sources deeper than myth." - Glyn Maxwell, New York Times Book Review "Bate has written, capaciously, arrestingly, a kind of tragedy.often veers close to the poet's singular perspective.He reminds us Ted Hughes was a marvelous poet: firstly, then fitfully, and then in a blaze near the end, and that the greatness in the work draws power from sources deeper than myth." - Glyn Maxwell, New York Times Book Review "Illuminating." - Daily Mail (London) "An excellent biography: compulsively readable, elegantly assembled.

and sensitive to the many aspects of Hughes's grand and complicated character." - Christopher Wiman, Wall Street Journal, front page review "An intelligent, even donnish work of criticism that connects the poems to the life." - Washington Post "An incisive, humane and deeply absorbing account of Hughes's life and work." - New York Times ".Bate has provided new depth to Ted Hughes' biography." - Minneapolis Star Tribune "Imaginative, comprehensive.worthy of becoming the standard life of Hughes. Illuminating, elegant, and excellent.

" - Kirkus Reviews (starred review).