Christina Rossetti

Author profile

born

in London, The United Kingdom

December 05, 1830

died

December 29, 1894

gender

female

genre

Poetry, Literature & Fiction

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Christina Georgina Rossetti, one of the most important women poets writing in nineteenth-century England, was born in London December 5, 1830, to Gabriele and Frances (Polidori) Rossetti. Although her fundamentally religious temperament was closer to her mother's, this youngest member of a remarkable family of poets, artists, and critics inherited many of her artistic tendencies from her father.

Judging from somewhat idealized sketches made by her brother Dante, Christina as a teenager seems to have been quite attractive if not beautiful. In 1848 she became engaged to James Collinson, one of the minor Pre-Raphaelite brethren, but the engagement ended after he reverted to Roman Catholicism.

When Professor Rossetti's failing health and eyesigh...more Christina Georgina Rossetti, one of the most important women poets writing in nineteenth-century England, was born in London December 5, 1830, to Gabriele and Frances (Polidori) Rossetti. Although her fundamentally religious temperament was closer to her mother's, this youngest member of a remarkable family of poets, artists, and critics inherited many of her artistic tendencies from her father.

Judging from somewhat idealized sketches made by her brother Dante, Christina as a teenager seems to have been quite attractive if not beautiful. In 1848 she became engaged to James Collinson, one of the minor Pre-Raphaelite brethren, but the engagement ended after he reverted to Roman Catholicism.

When Professor Rossetti's failing health and eyesight forced him into retirement in 1853, Christina and her mother attempted to support the family by starting a day school, but had to give it up after a year or so. Thereafter she led a very retiring life, interrupted by a recurring illness which was sometimes diagnosed as angina and sometimes tuberculosis. From the early '60s on she was in love with Charles Cayley, but according to her brother William, refused to marry him because "she enquired into his creed and found he was not a Christian." Milk-and-water Anglicanism was not to her taste. Lona Mosk Packer argues that her poems conceal a love for the painter William Bell Scott, but there is no other evidence for this theory, and the most respected scholar of the Pre-Raphaelite movement disputes the dates on which Packer thinks some of the more revealing poems were written.

All three Rossetti women, at first devout members of the evangelical branch of the Church of England, were drawn toward the Tractarians in the 1840s. They nevertheless retained their evangelical seriousness: Maria eventually became an Anglican nun, and Christina's religious scruples remind one of Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot's Middlemarch : as Eliot's heroine looked forward to giving up riding because she enjoyed it so much, so Christina gave up chess because she found she enjoyed winning; pasted paper strips over the antireligious parts of Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon (which allowed her to enjoy the poem very much); objected to nudity in painting, especially if the artist was a woman; and refused even to go see Wagner's Parsifal, because it celebrated a pagan mythology.

After rejecting Cayley in 1866, according one biographer, Christina (like many Victorian spinsters) lived vicariously in the lives of other people. Although pretty much a stay-at-home, her circle included her brothers' friends, like Whistler, Swinburne, F.M. Brown, and Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). She continued to write and in the 1870s to work for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. She was troubled physically by neuralgia and emotionally by Dante's breakdown in 1872. The last 12 years of her life, after his death in 1882, were quiet ones. She died of cancer December 29, 1894.

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Average rating: 4.05 · 6,456 ratings · 197 reviews · 55 distinct works · Similar authors

	Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Illustrator), William Morris (Illustrator) 4.1 of 5 stars 4.10 avg rating — 3,101 ratings — published 1862 — 19 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Goblin Market and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti, Stanley Applebaum (Editor), Candace Ward (Editor) 4.06 of 5 stars 4.06 avg rating — 1,459 ratings — published 1862 — 10 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Complete Poems by Christina Rossetti, Betty Sue Flowers (Introduction), Betty Flowers (Introduction) 3.9 of 5 stars 3.90 avg rating — 654 ratings — published 1979 — 12 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Poems of Christina Rossetti by Christina Rossetti, Florence Harrison (Illustrator), Kathryn W. Plosica (Designed by) 4.06 of 5 stars 4.06 avg rating — 476 ratings — published 1986 — 16 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Selected Poems of Christina Rossetti 4.08 of 5 stars 4.08 avg rating — 128 ratings — published 2001 — 14 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Poems and Prose by Christina Rossetti, Jan Marsh (Editor) 4.08 of 5 stars 4.08 avg rating — 38 ratings — published 2008 — 4 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sing-Song by Christina Rossetti, Arthur Hughes (Illustrator) 3.53 of 5 stars 3.53 avg rating — 30 ratings — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Choice of Christina Rossetti's Verse 4.08 of 5 stars 4.08 avg rating — 24 ratings — published 1970 — 3 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Goblin Market, the Prince's Progress and Other Poems 3.67 of 5 stars 3.67 avg rating — 27 ratings — published 1913 — 14 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Commonplace by Christina Rossetti, Andrew Motion (Foreword) 3.12 of 5 stars 3.12 avg rating — 16 ratings — published 2005 — 4 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Christina Rossetti

“Ah me, but where are now the songs I sang
When life was sweet because you call’d them sweet?”
― Christina Rossetti, Poems of Christina Rossetti

tags: love

165 people liked it

“When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet:
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain:

And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply I may forget.”
― Christina Rossetti, The Complete Poems

tags: death, poetry

146 people liked it

“Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine;
Love was born at Christmas;
Star and angels gave the sign.”
― Christina Rossetti

100 people liked it

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Christina Rossetti

Author profile

combine editionsChristina Rossetti's Books

Quotes by Christina Rossetti

Topics Mentioning This Author

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Christina Rossetti's Books