Celia Thaxter

Thaxter's home in Watertown

The Celia Thaxter House, Newtonville

On September 13, 1851,[6] at the age of 16, she married Levi Thaxter and moved to the mainland, residing first in Watertown, Massachusetts, at a property his father owned. In 1854, they accepted an offer to use a house in Newburyport. The couple then acquired their own home, today called the Celia Thaxter House, built in 1856 near the Charles River at Newtonville. By then, they had two sons, Karl and John. Roland was born in 1858, and went on to become a prominent mycologist who taught at Harvard University where he studied insect-associated fungi and Myxobacteria.[7][6]

Her first published poem was written during this time on the mainland. That poem, "Land-Locked", was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1861 and earned her US$10.[7] In 1879,[8] Thaxter suddenly became known upon the literary horizon with a collection of poems entitled Driftwood, and considering that they came from a group of islands, away from the mainland far enough to prevent frequent communication, the debuting work was received with almost as much surprise as pleasure. Although stray poems of the ocean had been published, signed with the name of "Celia Thaxter", still it was difficult for the critical reviewer of Boston to realize that the bearer of this name was actually a long time resident, if not exactly a native of those isles lying off the coast of New Hampshire.[5] Her poetry appeared in the Atlantic, Century, Harper's, Independent, New England Magazine, and Scribner's, while her writing for juvenile audiences appeared in Our Young Folks and St. Nicholas.[6]

Thaxter's cottage on Appledore Island

Karl, who had mental illness since childhood, traveled with Thaxter during the periods she returned to the islands, while the two younger sons traveled with the husband to Florida after his serious illness in 1868–69. Her life with Levi was not harmonious, and there were other periods of separation,[6] She missed her islands, and so after ten years away, Thaxter moved back to Appledore Island. She became the hostess of her father's hotel, the Appledore House, and welcomed many New England literary and artistic notables to the island and to her parlor, including writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Whittier, Sarah Orne Jewett, and the artists William Morris Hunt and Childe Hassam, the latter of whom painted several pictures of her. The watercolorist Ellen Robbins also painted the flowers in her garden. Celia was present at the time of the infamous murders on Smuttynose Island, about which she wrote the essay A Memorable Murder.[9]

William Morris Hunt, a close family friend, spent the last months of his life on Appledore Island, trying to recover from a crippling depression. He drowned in late summer 1879, three days after finishing his last sketch. Celia Thaxter discovered the painter's body, an apparent suicide. That same year, the Thaxters bought 186 acres (75 hectares) along Seapoint Beach on Cutts Island, Kittery Point, where they built a grand Shingle Style "cottage" called Champernowne Farm. In 1880, they auctioned the Newtonville house, and removed to Kittery Point, Maine. In 1881, she vacationed in Europe with her brother, Oscar.[6] In the same year, Thaxter and her husband moved to the new home in Kittery Point. In March 1888, her friend Whittier hoped "on that lonesome, windy coast where she can only look upon the desolate, winter-bitten pasture-land and the cold grey sea" she could be comforted by "memories of her Italian travels".[10]

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Holloway, Laura Carter (1889). The Woman's Story: As Told by Twenty American Women (Public domain ed.). Hurst.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

• Gollin, Rita K. (2002). Annie Adams Fields: Woman of Letters. Univ of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-313-1.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Radcliffe College (1971). Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-62734-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Scharnhorst, Gary (11 April 2014). Literary Eats: Emily Dickinson’s Gingerbread, Ernest Hemingway’s Picadillo, Eudora Welty’s Onion Pie and 400+ Other Recipes from American Authors Past and Present. McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-1252-2.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Studwell, William Emmett; Schueneman, Bruce R. (1999). Barbershops, Bullets, and Ballads: An Annotated Anthology of Underappreciated American Musical Jewels, 1865-1918. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-7890-0766-7.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Sweeting, Adam W. (2003). Beneath the Second Sun: A Cultural History of Indian Summer. UPNE. ISBN 978-1-58465-330-1.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Thaxter, Rosamond (1962). Sandpiper: The Life of Celia Thaxter. Wake-Brook House.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Vallier, Jane E. (1982). Poet on demand: the life, letters, and works of Celia Thaxter. P.E. Randall. ISBN 978-0-914339-47-2.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Walker, Cheryl (1992). American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-1791-9.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)