This article on the early years of the T. S. Eliot Prize was written and added to the website in 2025.

The winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize 1998 was Ted Hughes for his collection Birthday Letters (Faber & Faber). The prize was awarded posthumously, Ted Hughes having died on 28 October 1998. Mrs Valerie Eliot, who generously funds the £5,000 prize, presented the award to Hughes’s daughter Frieda at a ceremony at the British Library, London, on 11 January 1999.

The judges Bernard O’Donoghue (Chair), Simon Armitage and Maura Dooley chose from 82 submitted collections and a shortlist of ten books. Bernard O’Donoghue said:

In any other year, any of these books would have been a fine winner of the prize, but this year the towering presence of Hughes’s accomplished, powerful and utterly cohesive collection could not be overlooked. It is a truly great book.

Birthday Letters was chosen from a shortlist of ten books:

Sarah Corbett – The Red Wardrobe (Seren Books)

Fred D’Aguiar – Bill of Rights (Chatto & Windus)

David Harsent – A Bird’s Idea of Flight (Faber & Faber)

Ted Hughes – Birthday Letters (Faber & Faber)

Jackie Kay – Off Colour (Bloodaxe Books)

Glyn Maxwell – The Breakage (Faber & Faber)

Paul Muldoon – Hay (Faber & Faber)

Ruth Padel – Rembrandt Would Have Loved You (Chatto & Windus)

Jo Shapcott – My Life Asleep (OUP / Oxford Poetry)

Ken Smith – Wild Root (Bloodaxe Books)

This article, compiled from contemporary reports, has been published to provide a fuller picture of the T. S. Eliot Prize history.

The T. S. Eliot Prize was inaugurated by the Poetry Book Society in 1993 to mark the Poetry Book Society’s fortieth birthday, and to honour its founding poet. The T. S. Eliot estate has provided the prize money since the Prize’s inception, and the T. S. Eliot Foundation took over the running of the Prize in 2016, following Inpress Books’ acquisition of the PBS.