June 16, 1956
Silvia Plath & Ted Hughes

Sylvia Plath met Ted Hughes at a party in 1956 while studying at Cambridge in England. Though she was intensely attracted to him, the relationship between them was intense and fiery right from that first night: Hughes ripped off Plath’s red hairband scarf and silver earrings, and as he tried to kiss her neck she bit his cheek and left him bleeding. She wrote a poem about the encounter called “Pursuit”, about a woman pursued by a panther, in response to Hughes’ poem, “The Jaguar”. She spent the night with Hughes in his London flat before her spring European trip, and before long, they were discussing marriage.

They kept the marriage a secret because Plath feared it would affect her academic career and that she’d lose her fellowship grant. They married while her mother was visiting at the Church of Saint George the Martyr in London. Plath wore a pink suit and carried a pink rose which was given to her by Hughes down the aisle.

While their relationship remained turbulent, and after the couple divorced in 1962 due to Hughes’ infidelity, Plath wrote some of her greatest works during that time as a way to cope, including “Ariel”, “Lady Lazarus”, and “Daddy”.