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Christina Rossetti
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English writer of romantic, devotional and children's poems, including "Goblin Market" and "Remember". She also wrote the words of two Christmas carols well known in Britain: "In the Bleak Midwinter", later set by Gustav Holst, Katherine Kennicott Davis, and Harold Darke, and "Love Came Down at Christmas", also set by Darke and other composers. She was a sister of the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and features in several of his paintings.
Christina Rossetti was born in Charlotte Street London, to Gabriele Rossetti, a poet and a political exile from Vasto, Abruzzo, Italy, since 1824 and Frances Polidori, the sister of Lord Byron's friend and physician John William Polidori. She had two brothers and a sister: Dante Gabriel became an influential artist and poet, and William Michael and Maria both became writers. Christina, the youngest and a lively child, dictated her first story to her mother before she had learnt to write.
Rossetti was educated at home by her mother and father, through religious works, classics, fairy tales and novels. Rossetti delighted in the works of Keats, Scott, Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis. The influence of the work of Dante Alighieri, Petrarch and other Italian writers filled the home and impacted Rossetti's later writing. Their household was open to visiting Italian scholars, artists and revolutionaries. The family homes in Bloomsbury at 38 and later 50 Charlotte Street were within easy reach of Madam Tussauds, London Zoo and the newly opened Regent's Park, which she visited regularly. Unlike her parents, Rossetti was much of a London child and seemingly a happy one.
From 1842 Rossetti began writing out and dating her poems. Most of them imitated her favoured poets. In 1847 she began experimenting with verse forms such as sonnets, hymns and ballads, while drawing narratives from the Bible, folk tales and the lives of saints. Her early pieces often meditate on death and loss in the Romantic tradition. Her first two poems published were "Death's Chill Between" and "Heart's Chill Between", in the Athenaeum magazine in 1848. She used the pseudonym "Ellen Alleyne" in the literary periodical, The Germ, published by the Pre-Raphaelites from January to April 1850 and edited by her brother William. This marked the beginning of her public career.
Rossetti's more critical reflections on the artistic movement her brother had begun were expressed in an 1856 poem "In the Artist's Studio". Here she reflects on seeing multiple paintings of the same model. For Rossetti, the artist's idealised vision of the model's character begins to overwhelm his work, until "every canvas means/the one same meaning." Dinah Roe, in her introduction to the Penguin Classics collection of Pre-Raphaelite poetry, argues that this critique of her brother and similar male artists is less about "the objectification of women" than about "the male artist's self-worship".
In the later decades of her life, Rossetti suffered from a type of hyperthyroidism Graves' disease diagnosed in 1872, suffering a near-fatal attack in the early 1870s. In 1893, she developed breast cancer. The tumour was removed, but there was a recurrence in September 1894.
Christina Rossetti died on 29 December 1894 and was buried on New Year's Day 1895 in the family grave on the west side of Highgate Cemetery. There she joined her father, mother and Elizabeth Siddal, wife of her brother Dante Gabriel. Her brother William was also buried there in 1919, as were the ashes of four subsequent family members.
There is a stone tablet on the façade of 30 Torrington Square, Bloomsbury, marking her final home, where she died.
Books by Christina Rossetti
Maude
The protagonist is 15-year-old Maude Foster, a quiet and serious girl who writes poetry that explores the tensions between religious devotion and worldly desires. The text includes several of Rossetti's early verses, which were later published as par...
Goblin Market and Other Poems
Goblin Market and Other Poems is Christina Rossetti's first volume of poetry, published by Macmillan in 1862. It contains her famous poem "Goblin Market" and others such as "Up-hill", "The Convent Threshold", and "Maude Clare." It also includes the p...
Consider the Lilies of the Field
Rossetti began writing down and dating her poems from 1842, most of which imitated her favored poets. In 1847 she began experimenting with verse forms such as sonnets, hymns and ballads while drawing narratives from the Bible, folk tales, and the liv...
Old and New Year Ditties
LibriVox volunteers bring you 3 different recordings of Old and New Year Ditties by Christina Rossetti.
Promises Like Pie-Crust
LibriVox volunteers bring you 15 different recordings of Promises Like Pie-Crust by Christina Rossetti. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of February 3rd, 2008.
Echo
LibriVox volunteers bring you 18 recordings of Echo by Christina Rossetti. This was the weekly poetry project for April 12th, 2009.
Birthday
LibriVox volunteers bring you 14 recordings of A Birthday by Christina Rossetti. This was the Weekly Poetry project for June 13th, 2010.
Bird Raptures
LibriVox volunteers bring you 15 recordings of Bird Raptures by Christina Georgina Rossetti. This was the Weekly Poetry project for September 11, 2011.Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and ch...
Spring (Rossetti)
LibriVox volunteers bring you 13 recordings of Spring by Christina Georgina Rossetti. This was the Fortnightly Poetry Poetry project for March 25, 2012.Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and c...
Long Ago
LibriVox volunteers bring you 12 recordings of Long Ago by Christina G. Rossetti. This was the Weekly Poetry project for December 9, 2012.Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an English poet who wrote a variety of roma...
Sing-Song: a nursery rhyme book
One hundred and twenty six beautifully written poems about babies and childhood that capture the marvelous wonders of that age. - Summary by Maggie Travers
Summer
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems. She is famous for writing Goblin Market and Remember, and the words of the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter. Rossetti was educate...
Uphill
Rossetti began writing down and dating her poems from 1842, mostly imitating her favoured poets. From 1847 she began experimenting with verse forms such as sonnets, hymns and ballads; drawing narratives from the Bible, folk tales and the lives of the...
From Queen's Gardens
This is the fourth part of a collection of poetry written by English female poets. This part of From Queen's Gardens is a collection of 47 poems by Christina Rossetti. - Summary by Carolin
Sonnets
This is an excellent selection of introspective, inspirational and remarkably compelling sonnets from one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century. Christina Rossetti, in writing of the frailties of mankind and the mysteries of existence, shed...
Face of the Deep: a Devotional Commentary on the Apocalypse
For some time past, as the admirers... of Miss Christina Rossetti know, that lady has devoted her singular poetic genius and her deep religious feeling to the composition of works of devotion in mingled verse and prose. The skilfullest divine with...
Another Spring
LibriVox volunteers bring you 11 recordings of Another Spring by Christina Georgina Rossetti. This was the Weekly Poetry project for March 24, 2024. ------ Academics studying her work in the 1970s saw beyond the lyrical sweetness to her mastery...