Burnt Diaries

By Emma Tennant,

Book cover of Burnt Diaries

Book description

Burnt Diaries is Emma Tennant's third volume of memoirs, set mostly during the 1970s, in which she lays bare the experience of her affair with Ted Hughes while she was editor of the avant-garde literary magazine, Bananas.
Tennant's insights are engaging and honest - she offers perceptions of the writers…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked Burnt Diaries as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Emma Tennant was one of Ted Hughes’s lovers in the 1970s, at the height of Sylvia Plath’s early fame. I arrived at her memoir as research for Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation, but I stayed because Tennant’s writing is so witty and clever, full of riotous anecdotes of her time publishing chic literary magazines in 1970s London (she tries to steal, and sell, a family snapshot of Princess Margaret, nude on a French beach, for seed money, which ends in hilarious disaster).

Tennant never descends into self-pity or high drama in describing the dark and mysterious Hughes, who believes…

Want books like Burnt Diaries?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 74 books like Burnt Diaries.

Browse books like Burnt Diaries

Book cover of Matrix
Book cover of Notes on a Silencing
Book cover of Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,187

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in authors, Andy Warhol, and London?

Authors 198 books
Andy Warhol 22 books
London 862 books