British Library acquires archive of Olwyn Hughes

"The British Library has acquired a significant collection of letters sent by Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath to Olwyn Hughes, Ted Hughes' sister. Envelope from the Olwyn Hughes archive (reproduced with the kind permission of the Ted Hughes Estate)Announced at the sixth International Ted Hughes Conference at Pembroke College, Cambridge, the archive contains 41 letters from Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath along with literary papers including early poetry and prose drafts and some previously unpublished material. The total cost to purchase the archive of Olwyn Hughes was £29,500. The archive will be catalogued and made accessible to researchers at the British Library by early 2011. The unpublished material by Hughes includes a partial handwritten draft of an untitled play and unpublished poems that are believed to date from the late 1950s and early 1960s. The literary drafts in the archive highlight the creative development of both poets and many of the drafts were later published in Lupercal and The Colossus in 1960 by Hughes and Plath respectively"