Sylvia Plath's son, Nicholas Hughes, commits suicide at 46

March 23, 2:41 PMBook ExaminerMichelle Kerns

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    Sylvia Plath with Nicholas and Frieda in 1962

Nicholas Hughes, the 47 year-old son of American poet Sylvia Plath and British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, has committed suicide according to a statement released Sunday by Mr. Hughes's sister, Frieda.

Mr. Hughes, a successful marine biologist and academic at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks had recently left his post at the university to pursue pottery-making. He was found hanged in his Alaska home on Monday, March 16th.

In her statement, Frieda Hughes said that, although Nicholas had been battling depression for some time, he

was a loving brother, a loyal friend to those who knew him and, despite the vagaries that life threw at him, he maintained an almost childlike innocence and enthusiasm for the next project or plan.

Frieda and Nicholas's mother, the renowned poet Sylvia Plath, committed suicide on February 11th, 1963, by gassing herself in the oven of her London apartment after sealing up the doors of the two children's rooms and pinning a suicide note to their stroller. Nicholas and Frieda were one and two years old at the time.

In an unpleasant twist, Assia Wevill, the woman Ted Hughes had been having an affair with when he and Sylvia Plath separated in 1962, also committed suicide. In 1969, Ms. Wevill gassed herself and her four-year old daughter in a morbid mimic of Plath's suicide.

In the years following her death, Ted Hughes was severely criticized for destroying the final journal Ms. Plath had been writing in before killing herself; Mr. Hughes defended his decision in 1982:

I destroyed it because I did not want her children to have to read it.

Just before his death from cancer in 1998, Mr. Hughes wrote to Nicholas about his mother's tragic end:

What I've been hiding all my life, from myself and everybody else, is not terrible at all. Though you didn't want to read it....In 1963 you were hit even harder than me. But you will have to deal with it, just as I have had to.