SOURCE: "Britain Loses Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, 68, to Cancer," in Los Angeles Times, October 30, 1998, pp. Al-2.

[In the following obituary, Miller discusses Hughes's career and life upon his death from cancer.]

British poet laureate Ted Hughes, whose failed marriage to the tortured American poet Sylvia Plath earned him the wrath of many feminists but inspired some of his best writing, has died of cancer, it was announced Thursday. He was 68.

The reclusive poet, ranked by some critics alongside such 20th-century greats as T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden, died Wednesday at his home in Devon, in southwestern England.

"After a valiant 18-month fight against cancer, Ted Hughes died yesterday. The loss to his family is inestimable." Hughes' publishers at Faber & Faber said. He had asked his friends to keep the cancer secret.

In Britain, Hughes was known as an enormously successful author who made poetry popular. His...