One Woman’s Work: The Visual Art of Celia Laighton Thaxter [signed] [first edition]

Author, independent researcher, and Thaxter enthusiast Sharon Paiva Stephan presents a visual feast of full-color images highlighting the art of Celia Thaxter. Much attention has been focused on this celebrated author's poetry and on her life as a literary figures and artist whose family maintained a resort hotel on the Isles of Shoals. One Woman's Work focuses on a relatively unexplored facet of Thaxter's gifts: her hand-illustrated books, watercolors, and painted china.The Appledore Island hotel became an artists' retreat in the summer. Celia's own artistic inspiration was drawn from the natural objects that surrounded her on the remote islands off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Her hand-painted china, illustrated poems, and paintings helped earn much-needed financial support for her family, and also provide the backdrop for Stephan's theory that "art was Celia's passion." This impressive collection of 188 previously unpublished full-color photographs of Celia's art, and new scholarly essays by Norma Mandel, Dennis Robinson, Jane Valiier, and Nancy Wetzel introduce readers to a more wholistic side of this noted woman.