Assia Gutmann (1927–1969)

Assia Wevill, née Gutmann, was born in Berlin, Germany. Her father was a Jewish physician of Russian origin and her mother was a German Lutheran. The rise of the Nazi regime forced the family to flee Germany and they emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine, settling in Tel Aviv. At the British soldiers' club, she met Sergeant John Steel, who became her first husband, enabling her and her family to move to London in 1946. They all later emigrated to Canada, where Assia enrolled in the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. There she met her second husband, Richard Lipsey, a Canadian economist. In 1956, onboard a ship to London, she met David Wevill, a 21-year-old poet, who became her third husband in 1960. The couple had two children. She spoke numerous languages and worked as a copywriter in the advertising industry while writing poetry published under her birth name Assia Gutmann. She also translated the work of Israeli poet Yehuda Amich into English. She had an affair with Ted Hughes during his marriage to Sylvia Plath and gave birth to a daughter, Alexandra, nicknamed Shura, in 1965. They lived together in England and Ireland after Plath's suicide. In 1969, Assia Wevill committed suicide by gassing herself, killing four-year-old Shura at the same time. See also A Lover of Unreason: The Life and Tragic Death of Assia Wevill, by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev (2006).