Nicholas Hughes commits suicide

My swain just read me an article about this and I didn’t want to believe it. I’m a big fan of Sylvia Plath’s work and her suicide was so very tragic. and now we have learned her son, Nicholas, hanged himself on March 16th. Just terribly sad.

Mr Hughes, whose mother took her own life when he was one, hanged himself at his home in Alaska after battling against depression for some time, according to reports.

He was unmarried with no children of his own and had until recently been a professor of fisheries and ocean sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the Times reports.

His sister Frieda is travelling to Alaska. She released this statement: “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 Alaska. He had been battling depression for some time.”

News of his death comes 46 years after Plath gassed herself in the kitchen of the family home while her children slept in a nearby room. Her suicide prompted intense public interest in the family, with some feminist groups laying the blame for her death at the feet of Ted Hughes, who had left Plath for Assia Wevill, the wife of another poet.

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