Son of novelist Sylvia Plath commits suicide

Nicholas Hughes,the son of poet and novelist Sylvia Plath and the British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes,killed himself at his home in Alaska....

Nicholas Hughes,the son of poet and novelist Sylvia Plath and the British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes,killed himself at his home in Alaska,nearly 50 years after his mother and stepmother took their own lives,according to a statement from his sister.

Nicholas,47,was a fisheries biologist who studied stream fish and spent much of his time trekking across Alaska on field studies. Shielded from stories about his mothers suicide until he was a teenager,Nicholas had lived an academic life largely outside the public eye. But friends and family said he had long struggled with depression.

Last Monday,he hanged himself at his home in Alaska,his sister,Frieda Hughes,said over the weekend. It is with profound sorrow that I must announce the death of my brother,Nicholas Hughes,who died by his own hand on Monday 16th March 2009 at his home in Alaska, she said in a statement to the Times of London. He had been battling depression for some time.

Story continues below this ad

Nicholass early life was darkened by shadows of depression and suicide. Plath explored the themes in her 1963 novel The Bell Jar,which follows an ambitious college student who tries to kill herself after suffering a nervous breakdown while interning at a New York City magazine. The novel reflected Plaths own experiences,including her early struggles with depression and her attempt at suicide while working at Mademoiselle in New York as a college student.

After a stay at a mental institution,Plath went on to study poetry at Cambridge University,where she met Ted Hughes,who was on his way to world fame as a poet. The two were married in 1956,and had two children Nicholas and Frieda but separated in 1962 after Ted began an affair with another woman,Assia Wevill. Plath killed herself at the age of 30 by sticking her head in an oven in her London home on February 11,1963,as Nicholas and Frieda slept nearby.

Six years later,Wevill,who had helped raise Nicholas and Frieda after Plaths death,killed herself and her four-year-old daughter,Shura. Wevill styled the murder-suicide in the same manner,using a gas stove.

Ted,who became Poet Laureate in 1984 and was widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of his generation,resisted speaking openly about the deaths for many years. But in his last poetic work,Birthday Letters,published in 1998,he finally broke his silence and explored the theme. He died the same year.