Christina Georgina Rossetti

The English poet Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894) wrote poems of love, fantasy, and nature, verses for children, and devotional poetry and prose.

Christina Rossetti was born on Dec. 5, 1830, in London, the youngest of the four remarkable Rossetti children. Educated entirely at home, she spoke English and Italian with ease and read French, Latin, and German. Her first verses were written to her mother on April 27, 1842. Her first published poems were the seven she contributed in 1850 to the Pre-Raphaelite magazine, the Germ, under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne.

When her father died in 1854, Christina became the close companion of her mother and followed her older sister's example in becoming a devout Anglican. Though mild and virtuous, she was frequently anxious about her self-presumed sinfulness. She is said to have pasted strips of paper over the more blasphemous passages in Swinburne's poetry. Yet she remained devoted to her brother, Dante Gabriel, whose life was far from a model of conventional virtue. At 18 she fell in love with James Collinson, a minor Pre-Raphaelite painter, but broke off her engagement to him 2 years later, when he became a Roman Catholic. In 1862 she fell deeply in love with Charles Bagot Cayley. But she again refused to marry, this time because Cayley had no firm religious faith. These two broken love affairs are reflected in many of her poems, especially the sonnet sequence Monna Innominata. In other poems a melancholy regret for lost love is mixed with a disturbing obsession with death. Because she suffered long and frequent periods of poor health, Rossetti came to regard life as physically and emotionally painful and to look forward to death both as a release and as the possible moment of joyful union with God and with those she had loved and lost.

Rossetti's three major volumes of poetry were Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), The Prince's Progress and Other Poems (1866), and A Pageant and Other Poems (1881). She also published Commonplace (1870), a book of short stories; Sing-song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872), beautifully illustrated by Arthur Hughes and a favorite of Victorian children; and Speaking Likenesses (1874), a book of tales for children. But her poetry alone has secured her fame. Her poems, like those of the later Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, reveal a dual, self-contradictory sensibility. They express a sensuous attraction to physical beauty fused with a mystical and saintly religious faith. They are sometimes highly sentimental in tone yet scrupulously austere in diction and form. And throughout many of them one may find a quiet sense of humor that controls the sentimentality and keeps contradictions in balance. "Goblin Market" is certainly her finest poem and her most disturbing in its presentation of the conflict between sisterly love and destructive passion.

From 1871 through 1873 Rossetti was stricken by Graves' disease, which ruined her beauty and brought her close to death. When she recovered, she turned almost exclusively to religious writing, publishing a number of devotional books: Annus Domini (1874), Seek and Find (1879), Called to Be Saints: The Minor Festivals (1881), Letter and Spirit (1882), Time Flies: A Reading Diary (1885), The Face of the Deep: A Commentary on the Revelation (1892), and Verses (1893). In 1891 she began to suffer from cancer and died, after a long and painful illness, on Dec. 29, 1894, in London.

Further Reading

A wealth of biographical detail is in The Family Letters of Christina Georgina Rossetti, edited by her brother William M. Rossetti (1908; repr. 1968); Marya Zaturenska, Christina Rossetti: A Portrait with Background (1949); and The Rossetti-Macmillan Letters, edited by Lona M. Packer (1963). The best biography is Lona Packer, Christina Rossetti (1963). An interesting study of her poetry is Thomas B. Swann, Wonder and Whimsy: The Fantastic World of Christina Rossetti (1960).

Additional Sources

Battiscombe, Georgina. Christina Rossetti, a divided life, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981.

Birkhead, Edith. Christina Rossetti & her poetry, Philadelphia: R.West, 1977.

Jones, Kathleen. Learning not to be first: the life of Christina Rossetti, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992.

Marsh, Jan. Christina Rossetti: a life, New York: Viking, 1995.

Proctor, Ellen A. A brief of memoir of Christina G. Rossetti, Philadelphia: R. West, 1978.

Sandars, Mary Frances. The life of Christina Rossetti, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980.

Sawtell, Margaret. Christina Rossetti: her life and religion, Philadelphia: R. West, 1977.

Shove, Fredegond. Christina Rossetti: a study, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1977. □

Rossetti, Christina Georgina (1830–94), sister of D. G. and W. M. Rossetti. She was a devout High Anglican, much influenced by the Tractarians (see Oxford Movement). She contributed to the Germ (1850), where five of her poems appeared under the pseudonym ‘Ellen Alleyn’. In 1861 Macmillan's Magazine published ‘Up-hill’ and ‘A Birthday’, two of her best-known poems. Goblin Market and Other Poems appeared in 1862, The Prince's Progress and Other Poems in 1866, Sing-Song, a Nursery Rhyme Book (with illustrations by Arthur Hughes) in 1872, and A Pageant and Other Poems in 1881. Time Flies: A Reading Diary (1885) consists of short passages and prose, one for each day of the year. Her Poetical Works, ed. W. M. Rossetti, with a memoir, was published in 1904. Her work ranges from poems of fantasy and verses for the young to ballads, love lyrics, sonnets, and religious poetry. Much of it is pervaded by a sense of melancholy, verging at times on the morbid. Her technical virtuosity was considerable, and her use of short irregularly rhymed lines is distinctive.

Christina Georgina Rossetti , 1830–94, English poet; sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti . Publication of some of her poems in her brother William's magazine the Germ was her only contribution to Pre-Raphaelite activities. She was a devout Anglican and lived the last 15 years of her life as a recluse in her home. Many of her poems are religious, some melancholy and death-obsessed, e.g., "Uphill" and "When I Am Dead, My Dearest." Possessing a spontaneous lyrical gift, she had a firm command of traditional poetic forms. Much of her work shows a marked moral intelligence and independence of spirit, and she is recognized as an important Victorian-era poet. Her simple songs, especially in Sing-Song (1872), were favorites with children. Her volumes of poetry include Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), probably her best work; The Prince's Progress (1866); and A Pageant and Other Poems (1881).

Bibliography: See Christina Rossetti: A Writer's Life (1995); studies by E. K. Charles (1985), D. Rosenblum (1986), A. H. Harrison (1988), and D. A. Kent, ed. (1988).

Rossetti, Christina Georgina (1830–94), poetess. She was a younger sister of D. G. Rossetti, and closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Her works include the carol ‘In the bleak mid-winter’.

Rossetti, Christina Georgina (1830–94) English poet, sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Her most enduring work is contained in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862) and The Prince's Progress and Other Poems (1866).