Celia Thaxter (29 June 1835 – 25 August 1894 / Portsmouth, New Hampshire)

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Celia Laighton Thaxter was an American writer of poetry and stories. She was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Life and work

Thaxter grew up in the Isles of Shoals, first on White Island, where her father, Thomas Laighton, was a lighthouse keeper, and then on Smuttynose and Appledore Islands.

When she was sixteen, 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. She had a son, ... more »

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