The Oresteia. A New Translation by Ted Hughes.

First US edition. 8vo. Pp. [viii], 198. Quarter-bound black cloth over grey paper boards stamped in black meander border design, and lettered in copper to spine. Jacket design by Cynthia Krupat.

Ted Hughes's 'acting version' of the Oresteia trilogy – Agamemnon, Choephori and The Eumenides – that depicts the downfall of the royal house of Atreus. It recasts the Greek original in light of one of the key themes of Hughes's own poetry, that of survivor's guilt and remorse and need to grasp at significance after a death in the family. Commissioned by the National Theatre and completed in his pared-down style in the last year of Hughes' life, the plays were premiered in 1999 under the direction of Katie Mitchell.

"Hughes's rendering of this appalling story has the hurtling momentum one assumes the playwright's original Greek had for his Athenian audience... Ferociously physical... like the best of Hughes's own poems." –Ron Smith, Richmond Times-Dispatch