Sylvia Plath died separated but not divorced, so Ted Hughes inherited her work and destroyed her last journal

Plath and Hughes separated in October 1962. She died in London in February 1963, aged 30. The inquest found suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. They were still legally married, so Hughes inherited the Plath estate, including all her written work. He edited Ariel for publication, changed her order of poems, dropped some and added others. He said he destroyed her last journal, covering winter 1962 to her death, so their children would not have to read it. He said he lost another journal and an unfinished novel. He edited The Collected Poems, published in 1981, which won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Plath was the fourth person to win it posthumously. Critics accused him of reordering her work and restricting access to her papers. In 1969 Assia Wevill, the woman Hughes had left Plath for, killed herself and their four-year-old daughter Shura. Hughes died in 1998. In 2004 Faber published Ariel: The Restored Edition in Plath's own order. Plath's son Nicholas died by suicide in Fairbanks, Alaska, on 16 March 2009. Her daughter Frieda Hughes is a writer and artist in Wales.