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Christina Rossetti
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Christina Rossetti (December 5, 1830 – December 29, 1894) was a popular English poet much admired for her beautifully written poetry.
Born in London and named Christina Georgina Rossetti, she was the youngest of four children from a very artistic family and was educated at home by her mother, Frances Polidori (the sister of Lord Byron's friend and physician, John William Polidori). Her father Gabriele Rossetti was an Italian poet and worked as a professor at the King's College teaching Italian from 1831 to 1845, when he resigned due to medical reasons.Her three older siblings were also talented in the arts. Her brother, William Michael (1829-1919), was an English writer and critic; her famous brother Dante Gabriel (1828-1882) was an English poet, illustrator, painter, and translator; and her sister, Maria Francesca (1827-1876) – and the eldest of the four siblings - was an English author.
Christina began writing at the early age of 7 and in 1842, at the age of 12, her first verses were printed using the private presses of her grandfather.
Unfortunately, during the 1840's the family encountered severe financial difficulties, mainly due to the deterioration of her father's physical and mental health. In turn, Christina herself began to experience bouts of depression and had a nervous breakdown at the tender age of 14.
During this difficult period, Christina, her sister Maria, and their mother became interested in the Anglo-Catholic religious movement, and very soon they became devout followers. This religious influence is often expressed in her poems.
In 1850 she published seven poems under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne in the Pre-Raphaelite journal The Germ, which was a short lived publication founded by her brother William Michael and his friends.
Her first book – Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862) – wasn’t published until she was 31 years old. This work, written for her sister Maria, achieved much critical praise and led Rossetti to being proclaimed 'female laureate' and the natural successor to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who had died two months previously.
Christina mainly focused on devotional writing and children's poetry for the remainder of her life. Although she led an active, social life and had a wide circle of friends, by the 1880's a thyroid disorder called Grave's disease had left her an invalid.
In 1893 she was stricken with cancer and died the following year on December 29th, 1894 at the age of 64. She is buried in Highgate Cemetery in London.
| Christina Rossetti Poems |
| Available From Amazon.com |
The Complete Poems
Christina Rossetti is unique among Victorian poets for the sheer range of her subject matter and the variety of her verse form. This first fully annotated collection, based on the definitive texts, brings together fantasy poems such as "Goblin Market," terrifyingly vivid verses for children, love lyrics, sonnets, hymns, and ballads, as well as the vast body of her devotional poetry. Weaving connections between love and death, triumph and loss, heavenly joys and earthly pleasures, Rossetti's poems startle the imagination with their extraordinary truth, beauty, and intensity.
Rossetti: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)
This hardcover volume contains a full selection of Rossetti's work, including her lyric poems, dramatic and narrative poems, rhymes and riddles, sonnet sequences, prayers and meditations, and an index of first lines.
Christina Rossetti's Faithful Imagination: The Devotional Poetry and Prose
This new study focuses on the critically neglected area of Rossetti's devotional poetry and her prose.
Christina Rossetti: A Biographical And Critical Study
A biography of Christina Rossetti, full of interesting detail on the literary life of the period and on the entire Rossetti clan, one of the most remarkable families in British literary history and prime movers in the pre-Raphaelite movement of 19th century England.
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