The Poetry of Celia Thaxter - Volume II - Paperback

by Ceila Thaxter (Author) Celia Laighton Thaxter was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on June 29th, 1835 and spent her childhood years on the Isles of Shoals, initially on White Island, where her father, Thomas Laighton, was a lighthouse keeper, and then the wonderfully named Smuttynose and Appledore Islands. At sixteen, she married Levi Thaxter, her father's business partner, and moved to the mainland, residing first in Watertown, Massachusetts, at a property his father owned. In 1854, they moved to a house in Newburyport and later, in 1856, acquired their own home near the Charles River at Newtonville. Celia had two sons, one of whom was Roland, born August 28, 1858, and would become a prominent mycologist who would later teach at Harvard. 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 $10. It was to be the beginning of a career that would make her one of America's most popular poets and s