Marriage of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

The marriage of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes took place in London on June 16, 1956, after they met while Plath was studying at Newnham College. It joined a period of academic and poetic achievement to a new life together, but the concise account of the wedding also points forward: their marriage would later be marked by separation.

Meeting and Background

Plath arrived at Newnham College at Cambridge University on an English Fulbright year after graduating summa cum laude from Smith College in June 1955. Her Fulbright was renewed; following a vacation in Spain, she and Hughes lived in Cambridge for another year. It was in this Cambridge period that she met the British poet who became her husband.

The Wedding

Plath and Hughes married in London on June 16, 1956. The date was Bloomsday, giving the wedding a specific literary calendar association. The evidence records the place, date, and sequence from meeting to marriage, but does not describe the ceremony itself or attribute a particular motive to either spouse.

Life After the Marriage

After the wedding and their additional year in Cambridge, Plath and Hughes moved to the United States in the spring of 1957. Plath returned to Smith College, where colleagues judged her one of the department's finest instructors. This relocation situates the marriage within Plath's continuing work as a poet and teacher rather than presenting it as an end to her independent professional trajectory.

Significance and Later Context

The wedding begins the documented history of Plath and Hughes as a married couple, but it does not establish a simple, uninterrupted romantic resolution. The account later identifies their separation as part of the marriage's history. Read in that light, the precise wedding date marks both a union and the start of a relationship whose later course would include rupture; the available evidence does not give the circumstances or timing of that separation.