News at Eleven: When [Ted] Hughes and [Sylvia] Plath's marriage

began its slow unravelling, their papers became a surrogate for violence towards one another. In 1961, when Hughes was late returning from a meeting with a BBC radio producer, Plath in a rage tore up a number of his manuscripts along with his Complete Works of Shakespeare--the red-bound Oxford edition that he had carried with him on his honeymoon. Later, when Plath discovered Hughes's affair with Assia Wevill, she carried her husband's papers down from his attic study while he was away in London and set them on fire in the vegetable garden behind their Devon home.

from Times Literary Supplement: Ted Hughes, archives and alligators

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