Son of Sylvia Plath commits suicide

By Anahad O'connor

Published: March 23, 2009

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

Mr. Hughes, 47, was an evolutionary biologist who studied stream fish and spent much of his time trekking across on field studies. Shielded from stories about his mother's suicide until he was a teenager, Mr. Hughes 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 , 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 ," she said in a statement to the Times of London. "He had been battling depression for some time."

Mr. Hughes's early life was darkened by shadows of depression and suicide. Ms. 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 magazine. The novel reflected Ms. Plath's own experiences, including her early struggles with depression and her attempt at suicide while working at Mademoiselle in as a college student.

After a stay at a mental institution, Ms. Plath went on to study poetry at , 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 Mr. Hughes began an affair with another woman, Assia Wevill. Ms. Plath killed herself at the age of 30 by sticking her head in an oven in her home on Feb. 11, 1963, as Nicholas and Frieda slept nearby.

Six years later, Ms. Wevill, who had helped raise Nicholas and Frieda after Ms. Plath's death, killed herself and her 4-year-old daughter, Shura. Ms. Wevill styled the murder-suicide in the same manner, using a gas-stove.

Mr. Hughes, 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, as the book — in some ways considered a quest for redemption — was climbing best-seller lists.

Mr. Hughes was said to have protected his children from details about their mother's suicide for many years. But in at least one poem he seemed to indicate that Nicholas, who was only 1 at the time of her death, was pained even as a small child, recalling in one stan how Nicholas's eyes "Became wet jewels/ The hardest substance of the purest pain/ As I fed him in his high white chair."

Nicholas had a passion for wildlife, particularly fish. As a young adult he studied at the , where he obtained a bachelor of science degree in 1984 and a master of arts degree in 1990. Afterward, he traveled to the , earning a doctoral degree from the of , where he became an assistant professor at the and Ocean Science. According to the University, Mr. Hughes was an expert in "stream salmonid ecology" and carried out his research in and . He resigned from the faculty in 2006 but continued his research, the school said.

One graduate student there, Lauren Tuori, recalled a peculiar habit of Mr. Hughes', saying he would often "seek out a larch tree in a forest of spruce."

She added, " could use more biologists like Nick who still display wonder at the small things around them."