Christina Rossetti

English poet 1830-1894

Christina Rossetti was an English writer of romantic, devotional and children’s poem. She was the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, she was featured in many of his paintings. Christina was part of the Pre-Raphaelite literary movement.

Her father was a poet and political exile, from Vasto Abruzzo Italy, her mother was English and a friend of Lord Byron’s sister.

Christina was homeschooled by her mother and father. Through religious classes, fairytales and she delighted in novels. Rossetti loved the works of Keats, Scott, Ann Radcliffe etc she was influenced by them all .. The Rossetti’s home was always open to visiting Italian scholars, artists and revolutionaries ..

Christina’s father became ill and suffered from depression, so Christina was left with a governess which she hated, so her mother could work.. Christina started suffering from depression as a child, feeling isolated. She left school and had a nervous breakdown, at this time Christina and her mother observed the Anglo/catholic movement, which was the Church of England, religious devotion came to play a major role in her life….

In her late teens she became engaged to the painter James Collinson the first of three suitors which ended in 1850 when he reverted back to catholicism, same with the other two all for religious reasons..

Christina sat for her brother Dante’s many religious paintings ..The Girlhood of The Virgin Mary as one.. in 1849 she suffered again through serious bouts of depression and in 1851 had a major religious crisis ..

in 1847 Christina started experimenting with various verse forms Sonnets, Hymns, Ballads, while also drawing on the narratives of the Bible and lives of the saints.. her early process often dwelled on death and loss in the romantic tradition ..,

Rossetti’s first published collection Goblins Market and Other Poems came out in 1862 when she was 31… Goblin Market was widely praised by critics, Rossetti was named the successor to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who had died a year before in 1861..,critics have seen Goblin Market in various ways, as a comment on Victorian gender and erotic desire and social redemption, even though it was about two sisters misadventures with goblins …

Rossetti volunteered in 1859 at the Saint Mary Magdalene home of charity in Highgate. A refuge for ex/prostitutes, it is suggested Goblin Market was inspired by fallen women she came to know …she was ambivalent about the women’s suffragette movement, but had many feminist themes in her works, she was opposed to slavery in the United States, to animal cruelty and under age girls as prostitutes…

Her writings strongly influenced Virginia Woolf, as well as having some strong Freudian themes running through her work, sexual and religious repression..

Goblins Market tells the adventures of two sisters Laura and Lizzie with the river goblins … you can look this story up it’s very interesting, it’s about the bond between sisters …

Christian Rossetti