When Nicholas Hughes, the son of the late poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, committed suicide this year, the press struggled to find out more about the 47-year-old evolutionary biologist who lived in Alaska.
According to the NY Times, the Hughes avoided talking about his famous parents, and some of his friends resented the way his death was handled by reporters. In 1963, his mother committed suicide while her two children slept, and he battled depression for most of his life.
The article has more: “Carin Bailey Stephens, a public information officer at the university, had studied poetry and knew about his parents through the grapevine. ‘I hear you are the son of Sylvia Plath,’ she recalled telling him, hoping for a conversation about writing. ‘He just immediately made it clear that he knew about science and he wasn’t interested in writing,’ she said. ‘He was very gentle about it.'” (Via Bookninja)