1.
1879 in art
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Events from the year 1879 in art. April 10–May 11 – Fourth Impressionist exhibition in Paris, arranged by Gustave Caillebotte at 28 avenue de lOpéra, ford Madox Brown begins painting the The Manchester Murals in Manchester Town Hall. Chicago Academy of Fine Arts established, guimet Museum of Asian art established in Lyon, France. Museum of Fine Arts Berne established in Switzerland, kate Greenaways first book, with her own colour illustrations, Under the Window, Pictures & Rhymes for Children, is published in London
2.
American poetry
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Unsurprisingly, most of the early colonists work relied on contemporary British models of poetic form, diction, and theme. However, in the 19th century, a distinctive American idiom began to emerge, the history of American poetry is not easy to know. The received narrative of Modernism proposes that Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot were perhaps the most influential modernist English-language poets in the period during World War I. But this narrative leaves out African American and women poets who were published, by the 1960s, the young poets of the British Poetry Revival looked to their American contemporaries and predecessors as models for the kind of poetry they wanted to write. There are 14 such writers whom we might on that basis call American poets, early examples include a 1616 testimonial poem on the sterling warlike character of Captain John Smith and Rev. One of the first recorded poets of the British colonies was Anne Bradstreet, the poems she published during her lifetime address religious and political themes. She also wrote tender evocations of home, family life and of her love for her husband, edward Taylor wrote poems expounding Puritan virtues in a highly wrought metaphysical style that can be seen as typical of the early colonial period. This narrow focus on the Puritan ethic was, understandably, the dominant note of most of the written in the colonies during the 17th. Of course, being a Puritan minister as well as a poet, a distinctly American lyric voice of the colonial period was Phillis Wheatley, a slave whose book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in 1773. She was one of the poets of her day, at least in the colonies. The 18th century saw an emphasis on America itself as fit subject matter for its poets. The work of Rebecca Hammond Lard, although old, still apply to life in todays world. She writes about nature, not only the nature of environment, on the whole, the development of poetry in the American colonies mirrors the development of the colonies themselves. The early poetry is dominated by the need to preserve the integrity of the Puritan ideals that created the settlement in the first place, as the colonists grew in confidence, the poetry they wrote increasingly reflected their drive towards independence. This shift in subject matter was not reflected in the mode of writing which tended to be conservative and this can be seen as a product of the physical remove at which American poets operated from the center of English-language poetic developments in London. The first significant poet of the independent United States was William Cullen Bryant, whose contribution was to write rhapsodic poems on the grandeur of prairies. Formed the Fireside Poets were a group of 19th-century American poets from New England, the poets primary subjects were the domestic life, mythology, and politics of the United States, in which several of the poets were directly involved. Other notable poets to emerge in the early and middle 19th century include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Sidney Lanier, and James Whitcomb Riley
3.
Orange, New Jersey
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The City of Orange is a township in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. Orange was originally incorporated as a township by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on November 27,1806, portions of the township were taken on April 14,1834, to form the now-defunct Clinton Township. On January 31,1860, Orange was reincorporated as a town, portions of the town were taken to form South Orange Township, Fairmount, East Orange Township and West Orange Township. On April 3,1872, Orange was reincorporated as a city, the city derives its name from William III of England or William IV, Prince of Orange. Orange is often joined with neighboring East Orange, South Orange and West Orange, Orange had its origins in Connecticuts New Haven Colony. In 1666, a group of 30 of New Havens families traveled by water to found a town on the Passayak River and they arrived on territory now encompassing Newark, the Oranges, and several other municipalities. The area was situated in the northeast portion of a land grant conveyed by King Charles II of England to his brother James, in 1664, James conveyed the land to two proprietors, Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. Since Carteret had been Royal Governor of the Isle of Jersey, Orange was initially a part of the city of Newark, but it was originally known as Newark Mountains. On June 7,1780, the townspeople of Newark Mountains officially voted to adopt the name Orange, at the time, there was a significant number of people in favor of secession from Newark. However, this would not occur until November 27,1806, on April 13,1807, the first government was elected, but not until March 13,1860 was Orange officially incorporated as a city. Immediately, the new city began fragmenting into smaller communities, primarily because of disputes about the costs of establishing paid police, fire. South Orange was organized on January 26,1861, Fairmount on March 11,1862, East Orange on March 4,1863, Orange is located on the Newark and Mount-Pleasant Turnpike, the main road from Newark to Morristown, and ultimately to Easton, Pennsylvania. The town became a thoroughfare for travelers, and hotels abounded. Initially, the stagecoach was the method of transportation. Omnibuses of the Eclipse and the Morris & Newark Lines serviced Orange, the Morris and Essex Railroad arrived in Orange in November 1836, its first cars drawn by horses. On October 2,1837, the first steam locomotive appeared, the M&E later became a part of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, which exists today as NJ Transits Morristown Line. Trolley cars appeared much later, with the Orange and Newark Horse Car Railroad Company running its first car up Main Street in May 1862, the Orange Crosstown Line, eventually extending from Morris Street, Orange, to Bloomfield, was started in June 1888. Eventually, all of the trolleys, and the buses that replaced them, Orange was an industrial city from the outset
4.
Theodore Watts-Dunton
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Theodore Watts-Dunton was an English critic and poet. He is often remembered as the friend and minder of Algernon Charles Swinburne, walter Theodore Watts was born at St. Ives in what was then Huntingdonshire. He added his mothers name of Dunton to his surname in 1897 and he was originally educated as a naturalist, and saw much of the East Anglian Gypsies, of whose superstitions and folk-lore he made careful study. Abandoning natural history for the law, he qualified as a solicitor and went to London, one of his clients was Swinburne, whom he befriended in 1872. He contributed regularly to the Examiner from 1874 and to the Athenaeum from 1875 until 1898 and he wrote widely for other publications and contributed several articles to the Encyclopædia Britannica, of which the most significant was that on Poetry in the ninth edition. In that article he explored the first principles of poetry and he was in later years Dante Gabriel Rossettis most intimate friend. Watts household included his sister Miranda Mason, her husband Charles, her son, Bertie and later and they also employed a live-in cook and a housemaid. Watts-Dunton married Clara Reich in 1905 and she settled into the family with ease, Watts Dunton later decided to also take in Henry Treffry Dunn who had been one of Rosettis assistants. Like Swinburne, Dunn was also prone to alcoholism, Dunn died in 1899 whilst still living with Watts-Dunton and Swinburne. It was not until 1897 that he published a volume under his own name. His erstwhile friend Whistler sent him a letter mocking his perceived aggrandisement, Theodore, it read, the book was his collection of poems called The Coming of Love, portions of which he had printed previously in periodicals. In the following year his prose romance Aylwin attained immediate success, imaginative glamour and mysticism are their prominent characteristics, and the novel in particular was credited with bringing pure romance back into public favour. He edited Borrows Lavengro and Romany Rye, in 1903 he published The Renascence of Wonder, a treatise on the romantic movement, but it was not only in his published work that Watts-Duntons influence on the literary life of his time was potent. His long and intimate association with Rossetti and Swinburne made him a figure in the world of letters. His grasp of metrical principle and of the perspective of English poetry brought him respect as a literary critic. He died at The Pines, Putney, on 6 June 1914 and he is buried at West Norwood Cemetery, where his monument is a low capped stone. A blue plaque marks his home in Putney
5.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He wrote several novels and collections of such as Poems and Ballads. A controversial figure at the time, Swinburne was a sado-masochist and alcoholic and was obsessed with the Middle Ages, Swinburne wrote about many taboo topics, such as lesbianism, cannibalism, sado-masochism, and anti-theism. His poems have many common motifs, such as the Ocean, Time, several historical people are featured in his poems, such as Sappho, Anactoria, Jesus and Catullus. Swinburne was born at 7 Chester Street, Grosvenor Place, London, on 5 April 1837 and he was the eldest of six children born to Captain Charles Henry Swinburne and Lady Jane Henrietta, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Ashburnham, a wealthy Northumbrian family. He grew up at East Dene in Bonchurch on the Isle of Wight, as a child, Swinburne was nervous and frail, but was also fired with nervous energy and fearlessness to the point of being reckless. He attended Eton College, where he first started writing poetry, at Eton, he won first prizes in French and Italian. He returned in May 1860, though he never received a degree, Swinburne considered Northumberland to be his native county, an emotion reflected in poems like the intensely patriotic Northumberland, Grace Darling and others. He enjoyed riding his pony across the moors through honeyed leagues of the northland border, in the period 1857–60, Swinburne became one of Lady Pauline Trevelyans intellectual circle at Wallington Hall. After his grandfathers death in 1860, he stayed with William Bell Scott in Newcastle, in 1861, Swinburne visited Menton on the French Riviera to recover from excessive use of alcohol, staying at the Villa Laurenti. From Menton, Swinburne travelled to Italy, where he journeyed extensively, in December 1862, Swinburne accompanied Scott and his guests, probably including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, on a trip to Tynemouth. At Oxford, Swinburne met several Pre-Raphaelites, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Swinburne was an alcoholic and algolagniac and highly excitable. Thereafter, he lost his youthful rebelliousness and developed into a figure of social respectability and it was said of Watts that he saved the man and killed the poet. Swinburne died at the Pines on 10 April 1909 at the age of 72 and was buried at St. Boniface Church, Bonchurch on the Isle of Wight. Common gossip of the time reported that he had a crush on the explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton. The English language is poor in rhymes, and most English poets. Swinburnes work was quite popular among undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge. T. S. Eliot read Swinburnes essays on the Shakespearean and Jonsonian dramatists in The Contemporaries of Shakespeare and The Age of Shakespeare and Swinburnes books on Shakespeare and Jonson
6.
Putney
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Putney is a district in south-west London, England in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is centred 5.1 miles south-west of Charing Cross, the area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. And thus we take leave of Putney, one of the pleasantest of the London suburbs, Putney is an ancient parish which covered 9.11 square kilometres and was until 1889 in the Hundred of Brixton in the county of Surrey. Its area has reduced by the loss of Roehampton to the south-west. In 1855 the parish was included in the area of responsibility of the Metropolitan Board of Works and was grouped into the Wandsworth District, in 1889 the area was removed from Surrey and became part of the County of London. The Wandsworth District became the Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth in 1900, since 1965 Putney has formed part of the London Borough of Wandsworth in Greater London. The benefice of the remains a perpetual curacy whose patron is the Dean. It has a small chantry chapel removed from the east end of the south aisle, a charitable almshouse for 12 men and women, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, was erected by Sir Abraham Dawes, who provided it with an endowment. Putney was also birthplace of Thomas Cromwell, made Earl of Essex by Henry VIII and of Edward Gibbon, author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, died at a house on Putney Heath. At that time Putney took on Londons premier role in civil engineering, Putney had a second place of worship, for Independents and Roehampton was in the process of achieving separate parish status. The proprietors of the bridge distributed £31 per annum to watermen, and watermens widows and children, Putney in 1887 covered 9 square kilometres. Putney appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Putelei and it was noted that it did not fall into the category of local jurisdictions known as a manor, but obtained 20 shillings from the ferry or market toll at Putney belonging to the manor of Mortlake. One famous crossing at Putney was that of Cardinal Wolsey in 1529 upon his disgrace in falling out of favour with Henry VIII and on ceasing to be the holder of the Great Seal of England. As he was riding up Putney Hill he was overtaken by one of the royal chamberlains who presented him with a ring as a token of the continuance of his majestys favour. The first permanent bridge between Fulham and Putney was completed in 1729, and was the bridge to be built across the Thames in London. The ferry boat was on the side, however and the waterman. Walpole vowed that a bridge would replace the ferry, the Prince of Wales apparently was often inconvenienced by the ferry when returning from hunting in Richmond park and asked Walpole to use his influence by supporting the bridge. The bridge was a structure and lasted for 150 years
7.
English poetry
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This article focuses on poetry written in English from the United Kingdom, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The article does not include poetry from other countries where the English language is spoken, the earliest surviving English poetry, written in Anglo-Saxon, the direct predecessor of modern English, may have been composed as early as the 7th century. This is generally taken as marking the beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry and it is possible to identify certain key moments, however. The Dream of the Rood was written before circa AD700, by and large, however, Anglo-Saxon poetry is categorised by the manuscripts in which it survives, rather than its date of composition. While the poetry that has survived is limited in volume, it is wide in breadth, beowulf is the only heroic epic to have survived in its entirety, but fragments of others such as Waldere and the Finnesburg Fragment show that it was not unique in its time. Other genres include much religious verse, from works to biblical paraphrase, elegies such as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Ruin, and numerous proverbs, riddles. With one notable exception, Anglo-Saxon poetry depends on alliterative verse for its structure, with the Norman conquest of England, beginning in 1111 the Anglo-Saxon language rapidly diminished as a written literary language. The new aristocracy spoke predominantly Norman, and this became the language of courts, parliament. While Anglo-Norman or Latin was preferred for high culture, English literature by no means died out, other transitional works were preserved as popular entertainment, including a variety of romances and lyrics. With time, the English language regained prestige, and in 1362 it replaced French and Latin in Parliament, the reputation of Chaucers successors in the 15th century has suffered in comparison with him, though Lydgate and Skelton are widely studied. A group of Scottish writers arose who were believed to be influenced by Chaucer. The rise of Scottish poetry began with the writing of The Kingis Quair by James I of Scotland, the main poets of this Scottish group were Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. The Renaissance was slow in coming to England, with the generally accepted start date being around 1509 and it is also generally accepted that the English Renaissance extended until the Restoration in 1660. However, a number of factors had prepared the way for the introduction of the new learning long before this start date. A number of medieval poets had, as noted, shown an interest in the ideas of Aristotle. The introduction of printing by Caxton in 1474 provided the means for the more rapid dissemination of new or recently rediscovered writers and thinkers. Caxton also printed the works of Chaucer and Gower and these books helped establish the idea of a poetic tradition that was linked to its European counterparts. In addition, the writings of English humanists like Thomas More and Thomas Elyot helped bring the ideas, the establishment of the Church of England in 1535 accelerated the process of questioning the Catholic world-view that had previously dominated intellectual and artistic life
8.
Robert Browning
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Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known for their irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, Brownings early career began promisingly, but was not a success. His reputation took more than a decade to recover, during which time he moved away from the Shelleyan forms of his early period, in 1846 Browning married the older poet Elizabeth Barrett, who at the time was considerably better known than himself. So started one of historys most famous literary marriages and they went to live in Italy, a country he called my university, and which features frequently in his work. By the time of her death in 1861, he had published the crucial collection Men and Women, the collection Dramatis Personae and the book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book followed, and made him a leading British poet. He continued to write prolifically, but his reputation rests largely on the poetry he wrote in this middle period. Unusually for a poet, societies for the study of his work were founded while he was still alive, such Browning Societies remained common in Britain and the United States until the early 20th century. Brownings admirers have tended to temper their praise with reservations about the length and difficulty of his most ambitious poems, particularly The Ring and the Book. Nevertheless, they have included such eminent writers as Henry James, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, G. K. Chesterton, Ezra Pound, Jorge Luis Borges, among living writers, Stephen Kings The Dark Tower series and A. S. Byatts Possession refer directly to Brownings work, today Brownings critically most esteemed poems include the monologues Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea Del Sarto, and My Last Duchess. Robert Browning was born in Walworth in the parish of Camberwell, Surrey and he was baptized on 14 June 1812, at Locks Fields Independent Chapel, York Street, Walworth, the only son of Sarah Anna and Robert Browning. His father was a clerk for the Bank of England. Brownings paternal grandfather was an owner in Saint Kitts, West Indies. Brownings father had sent to the West Indies to work on a sugar plantation. Brownings mother was the daughter of a German shipowner who had settled in Dundee in Scotland, the evidence, however, is inconclusive either way. Roberts father, a collector, amassed a library of around 6,000 books. As such, Robert was raised in a household of significant literary resources and his mother, to whom he was very close, was a devout nonconformist and a talented musician. His younger sister, Sarianna, also gifted, became her brothers companion in his later years and his father encouraged his childrens interest in literature and the arts
9.
Kate Greenaway
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Catherine Kate Greenaway was an English childrens book illustrator and writer. Her drawings gave rise to a fashion in young childrens clothing in the 1880s and 1890s, Greenaway spent much of her childhood at Rolleston, Nottinghamshire. She studied at what is now the Royal College of Art in London and her first book, Under the Window, a collection of simple, perfectly idyllic verses about children, was a bestseller. Greenaways paintings were reproduced by chromoxylography, by which the colours were printed from hand-engraved wood blocks by the firm of Edmund Evans, through the 1880s and 1890s, her only rivals in popularity in childrens book illustration were Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott. As well as illustrating books Greenaway produced a number of bookplates, the influence of childrens clothes in portraits by British painter John Hoppner may have provided her some inspiration. Liberty of London adapted Kate Greenaways drawings as designs for actual childrens clothes, the style was often used by painter Maude Goodman in her depictions of children. Greenaway was elected to membership of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1889 and she lived in an Arts and Crafts style house she commissioned from Richard Norman Shaw in Frognal, London, although she spent summers in Rolleston. Greenaway died of breast cancer in 1901, at the age of 55 and she is buried in Hampstead Cemetery, London. The Kate Greenaway Medal, established in her honour in 1955, is awarded annually by the Chartered Institute of Library, robert W. Schuster and Rodney K
10.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victorias reign and remains one of the most popular British poets. Tennyson excelled at penning short lyrics, such as Break, Break, Break, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Tears, Idle Tears, Tennyson also wrote some notable blank verse including Idylls of the King, Ulysses, and Tithonus. During his career, Tennyson attempted drama, but his plays enjoyed little success and he is the ninth most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England and he was born into a middle-class line of Tennysons, but also had a noble and royal ancestry. His father, George Clayton Tennyson, was rector of Somersby, also rector of Benniworth and Bag Enderby, and vicar of Grimsby. Rev. George Clayton Tennyson raised a family and was a man of superior abilities and varied attainments, who tried his hand with fair success in architecture, painting, music. He was comfortably well off for a clergyman and his shrewd money management enabled the family to spend summers at Mablethorpe. Alfred Tennysons mother, Elizabeth Fytche, was the daughter of Stephen Fytche, vicar of St. James Church, Louth and rector of Withcall, Tennysons father carefully attended to the education and training of his children. Tennyson and two of his brothers were writing poetry in their teens and a collection of poems by all three was published locally when Alfred was only 17. One of those brothers, Charles Tennyson Turner, later married Louisa Sellwood, the sister of Alfreds future wife. Another of Tennysons brothers, Edward Tennyson, was institutionalised at a private asylum, Tennyson was a student of Louth Grammar School for four years and then attended Scaitcliffe School, Englefield Green and King Edward VI Grammar School, Louth. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827, where he joined a society called the Cambridge Apostles. A portrait of Tennyson by George Frederic Watts is in Trinitys collection, at Cambridge, Tennyson met Arthur Henry Hallam and William Henry Brookfield, who became his closest friends. His first publication was a collection of his rhymes and those of his elder brother Charles entitled Poems by Two Brothers. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellors Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, reportedly, it was thought to be no slight honour for a young man of twenty to win the chancellors gold medal. He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems Chiefly Lyrical in 1830, claribel and Mariana, which later took their place among Tennysons most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Although decried by critics as overly sentimental, his verse soon proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day. In the spring of 1831, Tennysons father died, requiring him to leave Cambridge before taking his degree and he returned to the rectory, where he was permitted to live for another six years and shared responsibility for his widowed mother and the family
11.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston. A member of the Fireside Poets, he was acclaimed by his peers as one of the best writers of the day and his most famous prose works are the Breakfast-Table series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. He was also an important medical reformer, in addition to his work as an author and poet, Holmes also served as a physician, professor, lecturer, and inventor, and although he never practiced it, he received formal training in law. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Holmes was educated at Phillips Academy, after graduating from Harvard in 1829, he briefly studied law before turning to the medical profession. He began writing poetry at an age, one of his most famous works. Following training at the medical schools of Paris, Holmes was granted his M. D. from Harvard Medical School in 1836. He taught at Dartmouth Medical School before returning to teach at Harvard and, for a time, Holmes retired from Harvard in 1882 and continued writing poetry, novels and essays until his death in 1894. Many of his works were published in The Atlantic Monthly, a magazine that he named, for his literary achievements and other accomplishments, he was awarded numerous honorary degrees from universities around the world. Holmess writing often commemorated his native Boston area, and much of it was meant to be humorous or conversational, some of his medical writings, notably his 1843 essay regarding the contagiousness of puerperal fever, were considered innovative for their time. He was often called upon to issue occasional poetry, or poems written specifically for an event, Holmes also popularized several terms, including Boston Brahmin and anesthesia. Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 29,1809 and his birthplace, a house just north of Harvard Yard, was said to have been the place where the Battle of Bunker Hill was planned. He was the first son of Abiel Holmes, minister of the First Congregational Church and avid historian, Sarah was the daughter of a wealthy family, and Holmes was named for his maternal grandfather, a judge. The first Wendell, Evert Jansen, left the Netherlands in 1640 and settled in Albany, also through his mother, Holmes was descended from Massachusetts Governor Simon Bradstreet and his wife, Anne Bradstreet, the first published American poet. From a young age, Holmes was small and suffered from asthma, when he was eight, he took his five-year-old brother, John, to witness the last hanging in Cambridges Gallows Lot and was subsequently scolded by his parents. After being exposed to such as John Dryden, Alexander Pope and Oliver Goldsmith. His first recorded poem, which was copied down by his father, was written when he was 13, although a talented student, the young Holmes was often admonished by his teachers for his talkative nature and habit of reading stories during school hours. He studied under Dame Prentiss and William Bigelow before enrolling in what was called the Port School, One of his schoolmates was future critic and author Margaret Fuller, whose intellect Holmes admired. Holmess father sent him to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, Abiel chose Phillips, which was known for its orthodox Calvinist teachings, because he hoped his oldest son would follow him into the ministry
12.
Celia Thaxter
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Celia Laighton Thaxter was an American writer of poetry and stories. She was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 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, 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 and she had two sons, one of whom was Roland, born August 28,1858, who would later become a prominent mycologist who taught at Harvard where he studied insect-associated fungi and Myxobacteria. Her first published poem was written during this time on the mainland and that poem, Land-Locked, was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1861 and earned her $10. Her life with Levi was not harmonious and she missed her islands, the watercolorist Ellen Robbins also painted the flowers in her garden. Celia was present at the time of the murders on Smuttynose Island, about which she wrote the essay. In 2008, The Library of America selected A Memorable Murder for inclusion in its retrospective of American True Crime. William Morris Hunt, a family friend, spent the last months of his life on Appledore Island. He drowned in late summer 1879, three days after finishing his last sketch, Celia Thaxter discovered the painters body, an apparent suicide. That same year, the Thaxters bought 186 acres along Seapoint Beach on Cutts Island, Kittery Point, in 1880, they auctioned the Newtonville house, and by 1881, moved to the new home. The home stayed in the family until the 1989 death of her granddaughter and biographer, Thaxters poems first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and she became one of Americas favorite authors in the late 19th century. Among her best-known poems are The Burgomaster Gull, Landlocked, Milking, The Great White Owl, The Kingfisher, Celia 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
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