Celia Laighton was born June 29, 1835, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and grew up on the Isles of Shoals. In 1851 she and Levi Thaxter married, came to live in Newtonville, Massachusetts, by 1856, and had several children. When she discovered that the editor of The Atlantic Monthly had published her poem "Land-locked" without her permission in March 1860, she started writing poetry and stories for popular journals like Harper's. Much of her writing was about the Isle of Shoals, where she eventually returned to work in her family's Appledore Hotel. Her volumes of verse include

• Poems (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1872)
• Drift-Weed (Houghton, Osgood, 1879)
• Poems for Children (Houghton Mifflin, 1883)
• The Cruise of the Mystery and Other Poems (Houghton Mifflin 1886)
• Yule Log (1889)
• My Lighthouse (1891)
• An Island Garden (1894)
• Stories and Poems for Children, ed. Sarah Orne Jewett (Houghton Mifflin 1895)
• The Poems of Celia Thaxter, ed. Sarah Orne Jewett (Houghton Mifflin 1896)

She died Aug. 26, 1894, on Appledore Island. For biographical information, see

• Celia Thaxter: Selected Writings, ed. Julia Older (Hancock, New Hampshire: Appledore Books, 1997). PS 3011 O54 1997 Robarts Library
• Thaxter, Celia. Letters, ed. A. F. and R. L. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1895). LE T3687k Robarts Library
• Vallier, Jane E. Poet on Demand: The Life, Letters, and Works of Celia Thaxter (Camden: Down East Books, 1982). PS 3013 V3 Robarts Library