Birthday Letters Birthday Letters Birthday Letters, published in 1998, is a collection of poetry by English poet and children's writer Ted Hughes. Released only months before Hughes's death, the collection won multiple prestigious literary awards. This collection of eighty-eight poems is widely considered to be Hughes's most explicit response to the suicide of his estranged wife Sylvia Plath in 1963, and to their widely discussed, politicized and "explosive" marriage. Until the publication of this book, 35 years after Plath's suicide, Hughes had said and published nearly nothing about his relationship and life with Plath. When it was discovered that he had infidelities
A Birthday Hansel A Birthday Hansel A Birthday Hansel, Op. 92, is a song cycle for 'high voice' and harp composed by Benjamin Britten and set to texts by Robert Burns. The last song cycle that Britten wrote, it was composed in honour of the Queen Mother's 75th birthday, at the request of her daughter, Elizabeth II. (The Queen Mother was patron of the Aldeburgh Festival.) Composed in March 1975, the piece was given its debut performance in January 1976 by Britten's life partner Peter Pears and harpist Osian Ellis. It was the last piece which Britten wrote for Pears, and one of