Celia Thaxter
Celia Thaxter | |
---|---|
Born | Celia Laighton June 29, 1835 Portsmouth, New Hampshire, US |
Died | August 25, 1894 Appledore Island, Isles of Shoals, Maine, US | (aged 58)
Occupation | poet, writer |
Language | English |
Notable works | An Island Garden, Among the Isles of Shoals[1] |
Spouse |
Levi Thaxter (m. 1851) |
Signature | |
Celia Thaxter (née Laighton; June 29, 1835 – August 25, 1894) was an American writer of poetry and stories. For most of her life, she lived with her father on the Isles of Shoals at his Appledore Hotel.[2] How she grew up to become a writer is detailed in her early autobiography (published by St. Nicholas), and her book entitled Among the Isles of Shoals.[3] Thaxter became one of America's favorite authors in the late 19th century. Among her best-known poems are "The Burgomaster Gull", "Landlocked", "Milking", "The Great White Owl", "The Kingfisher", and "The Sandpiper".[4] Many of her romantic poems are addressed to women; as such, she has been identified by some scholars as a lesbian poet.[5]
Early years and education
Celia Laighton was born in
The means of education were comparatively remote, and the permanent society of the islands for the greater part of the year offered very limited resources for a bright child.[6] During the period of 1849–1850, she attended Mount Washington Female Seminary in South Boston.[7]
Career
Mainland
On September 13, 1851,
Her first published poem was written during this time on the mainland. That poem, "Land-Locked", was first published in the
Return to 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
Death and legacy
Thaxter died suddenly while on Appledore Island. She was buried not far from her cottage, which burned in the 1914 fire that destroyed The Appledore House hotel.
Themes
Several of her poems are noted for their lesbian themes. Thaxter's "Two Sonnets," addressed to a woman, parallels the romantic passion present in Wharton's sonnet sequence "The Mortal Lease," addressed to a man.[5] Thaxter frequently brings together natural imagery and romantic desires; in the poem "Alone," she writes "I would have given my soul to be That rose she touched so tenderly!"[5]
Thaxter has done for the sea-shore and the varied aspects of ocean views and the rocky isles of her home, what Whittier has done for the milder aspects of the river on whose banks he dwelt. As he may be said to have exhausted the descriptive beauties of the Merrimac, Thaxter appears to have left nothing unsaid of the varying features of the ocean, whose waves were forever beating at her feet. With the minutest attention to detail; with the keenest observation for shades of difference; with an almost superfine susceptibility to climatic and meteorological changes, so that she might be termed a realist in word-painting, she at the same time possessed the glow and the imagination of the impressionist. Thus we see in her art the happy combination of the two schools. Certainly no one can read her poems without the conviction of certainty that she had seen with her own eyes what she described. There is something beyond the photographic accuracy of experienced observation always to be observed even in her simplest poems. She saw something more than the mere external forms of nature, and however much she may have delighted in these, it was not her sole object to reproduce them for other eyes. Beyond and within the external, she perceived the actuating soul: and it was this quality which gave the greatest value to her pictures of sea and shore.[3]
Because Thaxter wrote so well of the sea, her graphic imagery impressed some critics with the idea that she wrote of nothing else. This was untrue: her poems were not confined to the sea, as will be remembered with the story of "A Faded Glove," "Remonstrance," "Piccola," and scores of other verses giving land pictures; not to mention her musical sonnets on
Thaxter was happy to have attracted, very early in her literary career, the sympathy and admiration of some of the best writers and critics of the day: among the most enthusiastic of her admirers, was Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a scholar, who was also a lover of the sea, and one of the most competent judges of ocean nature painting of literati from that time. He failed to discover any lack of versatility in her work, and those who study her works as a whole, will note that there is hardly a moral idea, a practical point in ethics, or an emotion of the human heart, which has not been the subject of her pen, touched upon at least, with more or less freedom.[15]
Style
In Thaxter's prose writing, the picturesque prevails, though with some marked exceptions; in all is a moral undercurrent which crops out more or less prominently in all of her productions—prose or poetry. She wrote some charming poems for children, with such an exquisite blending of the didactic with the scenic and emotional, that the intended lesson was conveyed without exciting the natural repulsion of children to "morals," too obviously conveyed.[15]
Selected works
- The lost bell. A legend of the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea.
- Good bye, sweet day. (music, with Kate Vannah & Elsie Baker)
- The sandpiper
- Land-locked, 1861
- A poppy seed, 187?
- A memorable murder, 1875
- Among the Isles of Shoals, 1878
- The Nursery for youngest readers, 1878
- Idyls and pastorals, a home gallery of poetry and art., 1886
- The cruise of the Mystery and other poems, 1886
- My lighthouse, and other poems, 1890
- An island garden, 1894
- The poems of Celia Thaxter, 1896
- Stories and Poems for Children
- Woman's heartlessness, 1900
References
- ^ Sweeting 2003, p. 190.
- ^ Scharnhorst 2014, p. 166.
- ^ a b Holloway 1889, p. 264.
- ^ Vallier 1982, p. 1.
- ^ a b c Bennett, Paula Bernat (1998). Nineteenth-Century American Women Poets: An Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. pp. xli.
- ^ a b c Holloway 1889, p. 263.
- ^ a b c d e f Radcliffe College 1971, p. 442.
- ^ a b Walker 1992, p. 293.
- ^ Studwell & Schueneman 1999, p. 3.
- ^ Thaxter 1962, p. 145.
- ^ Gollin 2002, p. 230.
- ^ Mandel, Norma. "Celia Thaxter Timeline". Archived from the original on May 19, 2006. Retrieved May 1, 2006.
- ^ "Rosamond Thaxter". www.rosamondthaxterfoundation.org. Retrieved January 12, 2018.
- ^ "True Crime: An American Anthology". Library of America. Retrieved July 25, 2019.
- ^ a b c Holloway 1889, p. 265.
Attribution
- This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Holloway, Laura Carter (1889). The Woman's Story: As Told by Twenty American Women (Public domain ed.). Hurst.
Bibliography
- Gollin, Rita K. (2002). Annie Adams Fields: Woman of Letters. Univ of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-313-1.
- Radcliffe College (1971). Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-62734-5.
- Scharnhorst, Gary (April 11, 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.
- 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.
- Sweeting, Adam W. (2003). Beneath the Second Sun: A Cultural History of Indian Summer. UPNE. ISBN 978-1-58465-330-1.
- Thaxter, Rosamond (1962). Sandpiper: The Life of Celia Thaxter. Wake-Brook House.
- Vallier, Jane E. (1982). Poet on demand: the life, letters, and works of Celia Thaxter. P.E. Randall. ISBN 978-0-914339-47-2.
- Walker, Cheryl (1992). American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-1791-9.
External links
- Works by Celia Thaxter at Faded Page (Canada)
- Works by or about Celia Thaxter at Internet Archive
- Works by Celia Thaxter at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- A Memorable Murder
- Childe Hassam: American Impressionist, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Celia Thaxter