communication, the debuting work was received with almost as much surprise as pleasure. Although stray poems of the ocean had been published, signed with the name of "Celia Thaxter", still it was difficult for the critical reviewer of Boston to realize that the bearer of this name was actually a long time resident, if not exactly a native of those isles lying off the coast of New Hampshire. Her poetry appeared in the Atlantic, Century, Harper's, Independent, New England Magazine, and Scribner's, while her writing for juvenile audiences appeared in Our Young Folks and St. Nicholas. Return to Appledore Island Karl, who had mental illness since childhood, traveled with Thaxter during the periods she returned to the islands, while the two younger sons traveled with the husband to Florida after his serious illness in 1868–69. Her life with Levi was not harmonious, and there were other periods of separation, She missed her islands, and so after ten years away, Thaxter moved back to Appledore Island. She became the hostess of her father's hotel, the Appledore House, and welcomed many New England literary and artistic notables to the island and to her parlor, including writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Whittier, Sarah Orne Jewett, and the artists William Morris Hunt and Childe Hassam, the latter of whom painted several pictures of her. The watercolorist Ellen Robbins also painted the flowers in her garden. Celia was present at the time of the infamous murders on Smuttynose Island, about which she wrote the essay A Memorable Murder. William Morris Hunt, a close family friend, spent the last months of his life on Appledore Island, trying to recover from a crippling depression. He drowned in late summer 1879, three days after finishing his last sketch. Celia Thaxter discovered the painter's body, an apparent suicide. That same year, the Thaxters bought 186 acres (75 hectares) along Seapoint Beach on Cutts Island, Kittery Point, where they built a grand Shingle Style "cottage" called Champernowne Farm. In 1880, they auctioned the Newtonville house, and removed to Kittery Point, Maine. In 1881, she vacationed in Europe with her brother, Oscar. In the same year, Thaxter and her husband moved to the new home in Kittery Point. In March 1888, her friend Whittier hoped "on that lonesome, windy coast where she can only look upon the desolate, winter-bitten pasture-land and the cold grey sea" she