(Provides a vivid, illustrated description of a turn-of-th...)
Provides a vivid, illustrated description of a turn-of-the-century garden on the Isles of Shoals, filled with details on the care and tending of an extraordinary piece of land
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
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(Step into a time capsule and explore the flora, fauna, an...)
Step into a time capsule and explore the flora, fauna, and fishermen of the Isles of Shoals. Originally published in 1873, this book is a firsthand account of shipwrecks, storms, and simple lives 10 miles off the coast of New England. Celia Thaxter was a poet, artist, and noted gardener who spent much of her life on White, Smuttynose, and Appledore islands.She made the acquaintance of such luminous contemporaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Childe Hassam, William Wadsworth Longfellow, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. This book shines with attention to the smallest detail as Thaxter watches the seasons pass, the islanders age, and the times change in a tiny, seemingly abandoned corner of the world.
Celia Laighton Thaxter was an American writer of poetry and stories.
Background
Celia Laighton was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, June 29, 1835. She was the daughter of Thomas B. and Eliza (Rymes) Laighton. Her father, a descendant of one of the oldest Portsmouth families, was a successful dealer in lumber and West India goods, editor of the New-Hampshire Gazette, and a member of the state legislature. Disappointed in his expectation of being elected to the governorship, he had himself appointed keeper of the lighthouse at the Isles of Shoals, and in October 1839 removed with his wife and children to the keeper's cottage on White Island, determined never again to set foot on the mainland. Except for the decayed fishing village of Gosport on Star Island, the Shoals were practically uninhabited when the Laightons came. Celia and her two younger brothers had no playmates but sky and ocean.
Education
The education of her and her brothers was carried on by their parents with the assistance of chance visitors such as John Weiss and Levi Lincoln Thaxter. The latter spent an entire winter at the lighthouse as tutor to the lonely children.
Career
In 1848 Thomas Laighton opened a summer hotel on Appledore Island, the first of its kind on the Atlantic coast. It soon attracted many visitors, including among the earliest Lowell and Henry David Thoreau, and became noted as the summer haunt of artists and men of letters. The poet Whittier and the painters William Morris Hunt and Childe Hassam, among many others, were constant visitors and close friends of the Laightons.
About 1860 Celia with her husnand and sons removed to Newtonville, Massachussets In her inland surroundings Mrs. Thaxter pined for the sea; a poem expressing her homesickness reached Lowell's hands through the mediation of a friend and without the author's knowledge appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for March 1861 with the title "Land-Locked. " Thereafter Mrs. Thaxter was a frequent contributor of poems, sketches, and children's stories to various magazines. Her first volume, Poems (1872), was followed by the notable prose sketches called Among the Isles of Shoals (1873), which had appeared serially in the Atlantic. Later, among others, came Drift-Weed (1879), Poems for Children (1884), Idyls and Pastorals (1886), and An Island Garden (1894), with illustrations by Childe Hassam.
The death of her father in 1866 brought Mrs. Thaxter back to Appledore to care for her mother, who survived until 1877. Her two brothers continued to manage the hotel, and Mrs. Thaxter spent at least a part of each year in a nearby cottage. Her garden was famous for its splendor of poppies, and her living-room became a salon where the finer spirits of the summer colony delighted to gather. Her spontaneous appreciation of poetry and painting, her deep passion for music, and her childlike joy in nature endeared her to many friends.
In 1880 the Thaxters moved to Kittery Point, Me. , and in the autumn of the same year Mrs. Thaxter visited Europe, met Robert Browning, and indulged herself in a long rapture of picture-galleries and concerts. At home once more she settled into the quiet routine of a literary life, spending the summers at the Shoals and the winters in Boston or Portsmouth. Her husband died in 1884 and was honored by an epitaph from his favorite poet. Ten years later Mrs. Thaxter died suddenly at Appledore and was buried there. In 1895 a selection from her letters, Letters of Celia Thaxter, was edited by her friends Annie Adams Fields and Rose Lamb, who also prepared the final edition of her Poems (1896).
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
Connections
On September 13, 1851, at the age of 16, she married Levi Thaxter. For some time she continued to live with her family, while her husband occupied himself with the pastoral care of the fisher-folk on Star Island and the study of Browning's poetry, his lifelong passion. Three sons were born in the course of seven years, the eldest a mental defective who required his mother's care for the remainder of her life. The youngest son, Roland Thaxter, became a professor of botany at Harvard.