Assia Esther Wevill (née Gutmann; 15 May 1927 – 23 March 1969) was a German-Jewish woman who escaped the Nazis at the beginning of World War II and emigrated to Mandatory Palestine, via Italy, then later England, where she had an affair with the English poet Ted Hughes.
Described by friends and family as a free-spirited young woman, she would go out to dance at the British soldiers' club, where she met Sergeant John Steele, with whom she moved to London in 1946[citation needed] and who became her first husband in 1947.
"[3] The couple later immigrated to Vancouver, Canada, where Gutmann enrolled at the University of British Columbia and met the man who would become her second husband, Canadian economist Richard Lipsey.
[8][9] In 1961, poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath rented their flat in Chalcot Square, Primrose Hill, London, to Assia and David Wevill, and took up residence at North Tawton, Devon.
"[16] On 23 March 1969, at their London flat, Wevill killed her daughter Shura and then herself in a murder-suicide, sometimes described a "copycat suicide" of Plath's, using sleeping pills and turning on the gas stove.
[17][18] Wevill composed the 90-second "Lost Island" advertisement for "Sea Witches" ladies' hair-dye product for television and cinemas, called a "breakthrough in type" and a "huge success" by her biographers, Koren and Negev, that was "applauded in theaters."