Christina Rossetti

Author profile

born

December 05, 1830 in London, The United Kingdom

died

December 29, 1894

gender

female

genre

Poetry, Literature & Fiction

About this author

edit data

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.

(less)

combine editions
Books by Christina Rossetti

Average rating: 4.06 · 3,361 ratings · 140 reviews · 67 distinct works

	Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Illustrator), William Morris (Illustrator) 4.09 avg rating — 1,576 ratings — published 1862 — 16 editions	My rating:
	Goblin Market and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti, Stanley Applebaum (Editor), Candace Ward (Editor) 4.05 avg rating — 836 ratings — published 1862 — 14 editions	My rating:
	Poems of Christina Rossetti by Christina Rossetti, Florence Harrison (Illustrator), Kathryn W. Plosica (Designed by) 4.10 avg rating — 314 ratings — published 1986 — 23 editions	My rating:
	The Complete Poems by Christina Rossetti, Betty Sue Flowers (Introduction), Betty Flowers (Introduction) 3.93 avg rating — 255 ratings — published 1979 — 15 editions	My rating:
	Selected Poems of Christina Rossetti 4.13 avg rating — 67 ratings — published 2002 — 14 editions	My rating:
	Poems and Prose (Everyman's Library by Christina Rossetti, Jan Marsh (Editor) 4.21 avg rating — 29 ratings — published 2008 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Sing-Song by Christina Rossetti, Arthur Hughes (Illustrator) 3.60 avg rating — 25 ratings — 8 editions	My rating:
	A Choice of Christina Rossetti's Verse 4.25 avg rating — 16 ratings — published 1970 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Goblin Market, the Prince's Progress and Other Poems 3.72 avg rating — 18 ratings — published 1913 — 20 editions	My rating:
	What Can I Give Him? 4.00 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 1998	My rating:

More books by Christina Rossetti…

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

162 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

92 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

72 people liked it

See all Christina Rossetti's quotes »

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
Victorians!: August Group Winner!	69	148	Jul 19, 2009 08:04pm
Victorians!: Victorian Poetry	30	133	Dec 03, 2009 06:18am
Bibliophiles Anon...: What Are You Reading??	82	19	Sep 25, 2011 08:43am
One Million Pages...: Amanda's Pages	29	64	Nov 28, 2011 11:04am
100+ Books in 2012: Amanda's Reads 2010	63	75	Dec 31, 2011 02:00pm
Mythic Fiction: Books About the Land of Faerie	57	371	Jan 04, 2012 05:09pm
Challenge: 50 Books: Aubrey's 50 in 2011	54	35	Jan 12, 2012 04:18am
Busy as a Bee Books: Poetry	9	16	Jan 23, 2012 06:21pm
Books on the Nigh...: Just the Facts...tidbits about Authors	57	66	Jan 30, 2012 10:41am

More…

Christina's Fans (94)

Christina Rossetti

Author profile

combine editionsBooks by Christina Rossetti

Quotes by Christina Rossetti

Topics Mentioning This Author

combine editions
Books by Christina Rossetti