Edward James (Ted) Hughes was born in Mytholmroyd, in the West Riding district of Yorkshire, on August 17, 1930. Ted Hughes  was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death. After high school, Hughes entered the Royal Air Force and served for two years as a ground wireless mechanic. He then moved to Cambridge to attend Pembroke College on an academic scholarship. While in college he published a few poems, majored in Anthropolgy and Archaeology, and studied mythologies extensively.

Hughes’s lengthy career included over a dozen books of poetry, translations, non-fiction and children’s books, such as the famousThe Iron Man (1968). His books of poems include: Wolfwatching(1990), Flowers and Insects (1986), Selected Poems 1957–1981(1982), Moortown (1980), Cave Birds (1979), Crow (1971), andLupercal (1960). His final collection, The Birthday Letters (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998), published the year of his death, documented his relationship with Plath. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal For Poetry in 1974. He passed away in October 28, 1998, in Devonshire, England, from cancer.