[Acquired: Friday, 2 February, 2018]:
Hughes, Ted. Collected Animal Poems. 4 vols. London: Faber, 1995.
- Volume 1 - The Iron Wolf. Illustrated by Chris Riddell
- Volume 2 - What is the Truth? 1984. Illustrated by Lisa Flather
- Volume 3 - A March Calf. Illustration by Lisa Flather
- Volume 4 - The Thought-Fox
I first saw this truly beautiful set of Ted Hughes's collected animal poems sitting behind the counter at Auckland's Jason Books. Unfortunately, it had already been set aside for someone else, so I couldn't even give it a quick once-over. It stuck in my mind, though, and when I ran across one or two of the odd volumes in paperback, I wondered how difficult it was to get. The answer is, not very. They must have printed an awful lot of them, because it's not even all that expensive.
I'd have to recommend it as a good way of coming to terms with the best aspects of Ted Hughes' work without too many of its more self-serving elements. In that respect, it's possibly even better than the equally beautiful Collected Poems for Children which came out ten years later, after his death. The Raymond Briggs illustrations in that, though, make it almost equally indispensable (as well as rather more acessible than his massive Collected Poems):
Do any of these volumes overlap? Well, of course. Some poems are included in more than one of them (somewhat unpredictably at times). Probably one could get away with just the two above - but it would be a shame to miss out on this wonderful piece of book design (for that matter, the true purist will want a copy of Hughes's Selected Translations also: some of his best work was done in this genre).
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- category - English Poetry (post-1900): Alphabetical
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