In the vast and often storm-tossed landscape of American literature, certain voices emerge not from the bustling centers of culture, but from the quiet, salt-sprayed margins. Celia Laighton Thaxter, born on June 29, 1835, on the windswept island of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was such a voice—a poet whose work bloomed with the wildflowers of the Isles of Shoals, whose verses carried the rhythm of the Atlantic tides, a…
“When in these fresh mornings I go into my garden before anyone is awake, I go for the time being into perfect happiness.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
Nora Hopper Chesson, born Nora Hopper on 2 January 1871 in Exeter, England, and dead on 14 April 1906, belongs to that compelling company of poets whose work has remained more vivid than their public reputation. Her life was brief, her published oeuvre relatively small, and the surviving record of her private circumstances incomplete. Yet the poems she left behind possess a distinctive pressure and atmosphere: they a…
“The custom of leaving the house-doors wide open just as the clock strikes midnight.”
Neighbourhood:
Irish Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Symbolist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
