The son of tragedy-scarred poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath has killed himself 46 years after his mother famously gassed herself, his sister said in a statement published in the press Monday.
"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," his sister Frieda Hughes said in a statement published by The Times of London.
"He had been battling depression for some time," the statement said.
"He was a loving brother, a loyal friend to those who knew him and, despite the vagaries that life threw at him, he maintained an almost childlike innocence and enthusiasm for the next project or plan," it said
Unmarried and childless, the 47-year-old Hughes had recently left his teaching post at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks' school of fisheries and ocean sciences to make pottery in a home studio -- an "unusual choice," said Lanny Berman, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology.
"You wonder what were the motivating circumstances to make that kind of decision," Berman said.
"I would be hypothesizing, but I would guess that his depression was more symptomatic, that he was perhaps not feeling functional in his academic job," he said.
With Hughes's death coming 46 years after his mother, US poet Sylvia Plath, took her own life by breathing in fumes from the gas oven in her kitchen while her two children slept in a nearby room, many online chatters questioned if suicidal tendencies are hereditary.
Plath had suffered severe depression since she was a teen and had separated from her husband and the father of Frieda and Nicholas, British poet Ted Hughes, shortly before she killed herself in 1963. Nicholas Hughes was one year old at the time.
She took care to protect her children from the deadly gas fumes by sealing the kitchen door with towels.
"Depression can run in the family but that can be genetic in its pathway or psychological. I can't speak to this specific case because we know nothing about it," said Berman, who learned of Nicholas Hughes's death from AFP.
Nicholas Hughes had a strong bond with his father Ted Hughes, with both sharing a fascination with the natural world, according to the statement issued by his sister.
Ted Hughes was vilified by feminists after Plath's suicide, accused of pushing her to her death because of his extra-marital affairs.
Hughes pushed for the posthumous publication of "Ariel," a work containing some of Plath's best poetry, but also destroyed her last journal after her death.
He defended his action years later by saying: "I did not want her children to have to read it."
He suffered a tragically similar loss six years later when Assia Wevill -- the woman for whom he had left Plath -- gassed herself and their young daughter on March 23, 1969.
Hughes remained silent about Plath's death until the 1998 publication of "Birthday Letters," a volume of poems in which he details his relationship with Plath, from their first meeting in 1956, when she was a Fulbright scholar in Britain, until her suicide seven years later.
Ted Hughes died of cancer the same year that "Birthday Letters" was published.
"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," his sister Frieda Hughes said in a statement published by The Times of London.
"He had been battling depression for some time," the statement said.
"He was a loving brother, a loyal friend to those who knew him and, despite the vagaries that life threw at him, he maintained an almost childlike innocence and enthusiasm for the next project or plan," it said
Unmarried and childless, the 47-year-old Hughes had recently left his teaching post at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks' school of fisheries and ocean sciences to make pottery in a home studio -- an "unusual choice," said Lanny Berman, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology.
"You wonder what were the motivating circumstances to make that kind of decision," Berman said.
"I would be hypothesizing, but I would guess that his depression was more symptomatic, that he was perhaps not feeling functional in his academic job," he said.
With Hughes's death coming 46 years after his mother, US poet Sylvia Plath, took her own life by breathing in fumes from the gas oven in her kitchen while her two children slept in a nearby room, many online chatters questioned if suicidal tendencies are hereditary.
Plath had suffered severe depression since she was a teen and had separated from her husband and the father of Frieda and Nicholas, British poet Ted Hughes, shortly before she killed herself in 1963. Nicholas Hughes was one year old at the time.
She took care to protect her children from the deadly gas fumes by sealing the kitchen door with towels.
"Depression can run in the family but that can be genetic in its pathway or psychological. I can't speak to this specific case because we know nothing about it," said Berman, who learned of Nicholas Hughes's death from AFP.
Nicholas Hughes had a strong bond with his father Ted Hughes, with both sharing a fascination with the natural world, according to the statement issued by his sister.
Ted Hughes was vilified by feminists after Plath's suicide, accused of pushing her to her death because of his extra-marital affairs.
Hughes pushed for the posthumous publication of "Ariel," a work containing some of Plath's best poetry, but also destroyed her last journal after her death.
He defended his action years later by saying: "I did not want her children to have to read it."
He suffered a tragically similar loss six years later when Assia Wevill -- the woman for whom he had left Plath -- gassed herself and their young daughter on March 23, 1969.
Hughes remained silent about Plath's death until the 1998 publication of "Birthday Letters," a volume of poems in which he details his relationship with Plath, from their first meeting in 1956, when she was a Fulbright scholar in Britain, until her suicide seven years later.
Ted Hughes died of cancer the same year that "Birthday Letters" was published.
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