A JOURNAL which launched the career of late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, and led to him meeting first wife and muse Sylvia Plath, has been acquired by the British Library.

Saint Botolph’s Review, which contains handwritten notes, was a poetry journal established by Hughes and his Cambridge peers and contained the first works published under his own name. It was acquired from Hughes’s widow, Carol, and is one of only three copies of the journal held in UK public institutions. It is the only one with Hughes’s annotations.

The dog-eared and stained copy features a note from Hughes on its cover explaining the discoloration came from a bottle of wine which smashed as his friend Luke Myers fell off his bike.

“He was out selling copies (of which this is one) from his pannier basket, which they shared with the bottles,” Hughes wrote, before signing his name.

The first edition of Saint Botolph’s Review was created by Hughes with Myers (whose rectory home it was named after), Daniel Huws, David Ross and Daniel Weissbort, in February, 1956.

He had previously written under the names Daniel Hearing and Peter Crew, but among the magazine’s poetry and prose were the first contributions published under Hughes’s own name. He had attended a party celebrating the launch at a venue where Hughes met his first wife, Sylvia Plath.

A longer and unpublished version of the poem will be available to researchers at the British Library from next month, after the final section of his archive was fully catalogued.