Celia Thaxter
A 19th-century poet who turned a remote New England island into a celebrated literary salon, capturing the stark beauty of the sea in her verses.
1835–1894 (age 59)·American writer·Birthday: June 29
Biography
Celia Thaxter's life and art were shaped by the granite and salt spray of the Isles of Shoals, where she lived from childhood as the daughter of a lighthouse keeper and later hotelier. Isolated on Appledore Island, she cultivated an intense relationship with the natural world, which blossomed into poetry. Her vivid, observant verses about seabirds, storms, and wildflowers found a hungry audience in post-Civil War America, making her one of the nation's most popular poets. More significantly, she transformed her father's hotel into a magnetic cultural hub, drawing writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Greenleaf Whittier, and most importantly, her close friend and correspondent Sarah Orne Jewett. Thaxter's parlor became a legendary summer salon where literature and nature met. She championed the islands' preservation and her work, often tinged with a romantic melancholy, remains a poignant record of a unique coastal life.
#1 When Celia Was Born
The biggest hits of 1835
Celia's Life & Times
The world at every milestone
1835Born
1840Started school
1848Became a teenager
1851Could drive
1853Could vote
1856Turned 21
1865Turned 30
President: Andrew Johnson
1875Turned 40
President: Ulysses S. Grant
1885Turned 50
Karl Benz builds the first gasoline-powered automobile
President: Grover Cleveland
1894Died at 59
President: Grover Cleveland
Key Achievements
- Published the critically acclaimed collection *Poems* in 1872, cementing her national literary reputation.
- Authored the popular prose work *Among the Isles of Shoals* (1873), a key text in American regional writing.
- Hosted an influential literary and artistic salon at the Appledore House hotel, attracting major figures of the day.
- Was a pioneering conservation voice for the Isles of Shoals, advocating for their natural beauty.
Did You Know?
She was a talented painter of wildflowers, often illustrating her own manuscripts.
Her poem "The Sandpiper" is one of her most famous and frequently anthologized works.
She maintained a decades-long, deeply affectionate written correspondence with the writer Sarah Orne Jewett.
A restored version of her island garden on Appledore is maintained today as a historical site.
“The sun is not yet risen, but the sky in the east is all one flush of rose and gold, and the islands are dark against it.”
