16. Plath knew Ted Hughes was a hard-drinking womanizer, but she couldn’t resist the English poet’s charms
It was at Cambridge that Plath met the English poet Ted Hughes. In her diaries, she wrote that she was aware of Hughes beforehand, having read some of his work in a literary magazine. She was taken by his literary prowess. At the same time, however, Plath was also aware of Hughes’ reputation as a heart-breaking and hard-drinking womanizer. Despite this, when the two met at a party on February 25 1956, she was immediately smitten. It was love at first sight, Plath said. One of the most tempestuous romances in all of literary history had begun.