Ted Hughes, the 'brilliant, rugged Yorkshire poet' - new Sylvia Plath letter revealed

A previously unseen letter from Sylvia Plath, written weeks after her first encounter with Ted Hughes, reveals how she fell for the "brilliant, rugged Yorkshire poet".

Plath wrote an aerogramme to Patricia O'Neil Pratson, an American friend, from her rooms at Newnham College, Cambridge, informing her that she had a new man in her life.

The contents have remained private until now. It is included in a new volume, The Letters of Sylvia Plath, published next week.

Sylvia Plath, on Ted Hughes

Plath met Hughes at a Cambridge party at the end of February 1956, and believed she would never see him again. But by May 1956, when she wrote to Pratson, their relationship had moved so fast that they were planning to marry.

"Best news of all, and very new & secret, which I can't resist sharing with you, is that next June I'll be bringing home a brilliant, rugged Yorkshire poet by the name of Ted Hughes," she wrote, inviting Pratson to the wedding: "I'd be so happy if you'd participate in this joyous celebration!"

She went on: "I fell in love with Ted's poems before I met him, at a very bohemian party given for a new literary review. He is big, athletic (a discus-thrower, archer, plowman, etc) with a voice that out-roars Dylan Thomas..."

Plath listed his many attributes, including his knowledge of Shakespeare, Donne, Blake and Yeats; his ability to draw, and to tell stories "until the birds are struck dumb on the trees".

She adds that he "has one pair of dungarees to his name, is utterly penniless, honest, dear and brilliant".

In fact, the wedding was brought forward by a year. Plath and Hughes married three weeks after the letter, on June 16 1956, at St George-the-Martyr in Queen Square. London. She kept the marriage secret from all but her closest family, worried that it would lead to her Fulbright scholarship being withdrawn.

The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume I: 1940-1956, serialised in the Sunday Telegraph today, also include the correspondence between a young Plath and various admirers in the years before she met Hughes.

Peter K Steinberg and Karen V Kukil, two Plath scholars, edited the volume. They said the correspondence illustrated "the most overlooked feature" of the author's life: "that she was human, and therefore fallible."