Edward James Hughes was an English poet and childrens writer, known as Ted Hughes. His most characteristic verse is without sentimentality, emphasizing the cunning and savagery of animal life in harsh, sometimes disjunctive lines.

The dialect of Hughess native West Riding area of Yorkshire set the tone of his verse. At Pembroke College, Cambridge, he found folklore and anthropology of particular interest, a concern that was reflected in a number of his poems. In 1956 he married the American poet . The couple made a visit to the United States in 1957, the year that his first volume of verse, , was published. Other works soon followed.

Hughes stopped writing poetry almost completely for nearly three years following Plaths suicide in 1963 (the couple had separated earlier), but thereafter he published prolifically, often in collaboration with photographers and illustrators, as in Under the North Star (1981). He wrote many volumes for children, including Remains of Elmet (1979), in which he recalled the world of his childhood. From 1965 he was co-editor of the magazine Modern Poetry in Translation in London. Some of Hughess essays on subjects of literary and cultural criticism were published as Winter Pollen (1994). After decades of silence on the subject of his marriage to Plath, Hughes addressed it in the poems of (1998). In 1984 he was appointed Britains poet laureate.

His daughter was and his brother was .