This notebook appears to first date from early in Ted Hughes’s life and career, or possibly his childhood. A section of papers titled 'Britain's Little Errors' reveals that Hughes wrote in it up to 1993. There are several additional undated loose pages that have been taped or pasted in.
The pages shown here largely contain Hughes's transcriptions of traditional folklore, legends and proverbs from cultures around the world. There are tales of fairies and banshees from the British Isles, of vampires from Transylvania, and of shape shifting foxes from China. Hughes’s enthusiasm for collecting folktales and mythology began when he was a teenager, after his mother brought home a children’s encyclopedia that included sections on folklore. These stories left an extraordinary impression on Hughes. In a 1995 interview for The Paris Review he told Drue Heinz, ‘I remember the shock of reading those stories. I could not believe that such wonderful things existed’.[1]
Hughes also used the notebook for literary drafts, and for research notes on other subjects including Buddhism and historical figures.
[1] Ted Hughes, The Art of Poetry No. 71, interviewed by Drue Heinz, The Paris Review (Spring 1995 No. 13) <http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1669/the-art-of-poetry-no-71-ted-hughes>
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