What do you think?
Rate this book
A Choice of Christina Rossetti's Verse
'She is well worth exploring for the many felicities in her poems and or the perfection of her lyric ear-no other poet but Tennyson had a more flawless sense of sound.' Elizabeth Jennings
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
About the author
Christina Rossetti
347 books569 followersChristina Georgina Rossetti, sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, wrote lyrical religious works and ballads, such as "Up-hill" (1861).
Frances Polidori Rossetti bore this most important women poet writing in nineteenth-century England to Gabriele Rossetti. Despite her fundamentally religious temperament, closer to that of her mother, this youngest member of a remarkable family of poets, artists, and critics inherited many of her artistic tendencies from her father.
Dante made seemingly quite attractive if not beautiful but somewhat idealized sketches of Christina as a teenager. In 1848, James Collinson, one of the minor pre-Raphaelite brethren, engaged her but reverted to Roman Catholicism and afterward ended the engagement.
When failing health and eyesight forced the professor into retirement in 1853, Christina and her mother started a day school, attempting to support the family, but after a year or so, gave it away. Thereafter, a recurring illness, diagnosed as sometimes angina and sometimes tuberculosis, interrupted a very retiring life that she led. From the early 1860s, she 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.
Frances Polidori Rossetti bore this most important women poet writing in nineteenth-century England to Gabriele Rossetti. Despite her fundamentally religious temperament, closer to that of her mother, this youngest member of a remarkable family of poets, artists, and critics inherited many of her artistic tendencies from her father.
Dante made seemingly quite attractive if not beautiful but somewhat idealized sketches of Christina as a teenager. In 1848, James Collinson, one of the minor pre-Raphaelite brethren, engaged her but reverted to Roman Catholicism and afterward ended the engagement.
When failing health and eyesight forced the professor into retirement in 1853, Christina and her mother started a day school, attempting to support the family, but after a year or so, gave it away. Thereafter, a recurring illness, diagnosed as sometimes angina and sometimes tuberculosis, interrupted a very retiring life that she led. From the early 1860s, she 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 15, 2023
Tender and enthralling collection of poems. Rossetti is a master at portraying womanhood and her poems are a perfect illustration of femininity.However the poems also reflect the darker side of Rossetti’s being as they depict her feelings about death and what follows after it in a hauntingly beautiful way. An absolute stunner and would absolutely recommend it!
Here are some of my favourite quotes:
“She fell at last;
Pleasure past andanguish past,
Is it death of is it life?”
“For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.”
“He did not love me living; but once dead
He pitied me; and very sweet it is
To know he still is warm though I am cold.”
“Love, strong as Death, is dead.
Come, let us make his bed”
“Blank sea to sail upon,
Cold bed to sleep in:
Good-bye.
While you clasp, I must be gone
For all your weeping:
I must die.
A kiss for one friend,
And a word for two,
Good-bye: -
A lock that you must send,
A kindness you must do:
I must die.
Not a word for you,
Not a lock or kiss,
Good-bye.
We, one, must part in two;
Verily death is this:
I must die.”
“To-day is short, to-morrow nigh:
Why will you die? why will you die?
You sinned with me a pleasant sin:
Repent with me, for I repent.”
And many,many more
(Thanks Sir!!)
Here are some of my favourite quotes:
“She fell at last;
Pleasure past andanguish past,
Is it death of is it life?”
“For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.”
“He did not love me living; but once dead
He pitied me; and very sweet it is
To know he still is warm though I am cold.”
“Love, strong as Death, is dead.
Come, let us make his bed”
“Blank sea to sail upon,
Cold bed to sleep in:
Good-bye.
While you clasp, I must be gone
For all your weeping:
I must die.
A kiss for one friend,
And a word for two,
Good-bye: -
A lock that you must send,
A kindness you must do:
I must die.
Not a word for you,
Not a lock or kiss,
Good-bye.
We, one, must part in two;
Verily death is this:
I must die.”
“To-day is short, to-morrow nigh:
Why will you die? why will you die?
You sinned with me a pleasant sin:
Repent with me, for I repent.”
And many,many more
(Thanks Sir!!)
June 26, 2016
'Goblin pulp and goblin dew | eat me, drink me, love me'
This is an excellent introduction to Rossetti's poetry and gives a sense of the range of her writing. Rossetti, like Emily Dickinson, is a particularly sonic poet, sensitive not just to the words on the page but to the sound of them, both the qualities of the lexis itself and the rhythm and metre.
This can especially be seen in the extraordinary 'Goblin Market' which opens this collection, Rossetti's famously hypnotic, terrifying, violent and wildly sexual poem of femininity and desire, seduction and repulsion, liberation and containment.
Some of the other verse is quieter, more melancholy, shadowed. For a long time Rossetti was regarded as a 'minor' poet - recent scholarly reappraisals of women's writing has re-opened that categorisation. This is a good selection to experience Rossetti outside of the more usual anthologies which package her for easy consumption.
This is an excellent introduction to Rossetti's poetry and gives a sense of the range of her writing. Rossetti, like Emily Dickinson, is a particularly sonic poet, sensitive not just to the words on the page but to the sound of them, both the qualities of the lexis itself and the rhythm and metre.
This can especially be seen in the extraordinary 'Goblin Market' which opens this collection, Rossetti's famously hypnotic, terrifying, violent and wildly sexual poem of femininity and desire, seduction and repulsion, liberation and containment.
Some of the other verse is quieter, more melancholy, shadowed. For a long time Rossetti was regarded as a 'minor' poet - recent scholarly reappraisals of women's writing has re-opened that categorisation. This is a good selection to experience Rossetti outside of the more usual anthologies which package her for easy consumption.
June 21, 2025
The First time I read her and I've been pleasantly surprised. Very sensuous and spiritual depending on the case, beautifully written poetry. It's at times odd to think that I'm the opulence that the Pre-Raphaelite movement sometimes brought there would be a poet as delicate as her. Surely to be brought to attention.
Wonderful to read her in spring in my opinion, as many of her poems are very tuned to the growing season, the time and the flowers.
Wonderful to read her in spring in my opinion, as many of her poems are very tuned to the growing season, the time and the flowers.
August 5, 2025
I first read this collection in 2003/2004 and it holds some nostalgic value for me. I've read a lot of poetry since then that I like better. This isn't because these poems are bad, I have just found poems and poets that are more to my tastes.
That being said, Goblin Market will randomly pop into my head on a semi-regular basis and I cannot escape the fact that Rossetti chose a life that was controversial for her time.
That being said, Goblin Market will randomly pop into my head on a semi-regular basis and I cannot escape the fact that Rossetti chose a life that was controversial for her time.
July 10, 2017
A tender and evocative use of language and rhythm throughout, coupled with some very honest and lovelorn musings. Also, an overly generous dose of religious themes and narratives which aren't usually to my taste, but they make for interesting reading.
December 6, 2023
This came to me as very Victorian and avoiding half the unpleasant thing's of life which we talk ( Wind and physical sex) about now but also not avoiding the unpleasant things of life we don't talk about(Death and Guilt.).
August 30, 2022
Hm. Sure. Whatever
December 18, 2022
an interesting collection dealing with death, love and everything inbetween- i enjoyed this a lot
March 12, 2026
THE BEST POET EVER SHES UNMATCHED
May 31, 2023
I've never read a book of poetry cover to cover before, although I've often told myself I could if I wanted to. It might have been the antiquated romance of my University's classic book store, or that The Goblin Market by Rosetti was already one of my favourite poems, or (most likely) that at a slim 90 pages this book was very approachable... but for whatever reason I finally decided that I did want to read a book focusing solely on the works of one poet.
If you can't tell this from my rating: this didn't end up being the enjoyable experience. The book started off with The Goblin Market (yay!), which was then followed by some other, slightly more vengeful but still enjoyable poems like Maude Clare and Cousin Kate. What followed after this brief period of bliss was what I can only describe as the Victorian equivalent of the tumblr page of a 16 year old emo kid. All the poems fall into a couple categories:
- I act like I am happy around other people, but then go upstairs and cry in my room.
- My life sucks, but since I am good and they are bad things will go well for me in heaven
- You like her instead of me? Jokes on you: she's a hussy.
- Springtime is a period of growth, but I am in emotional winter right now.
The latter 60% of the book was devoted exclusively to these themes. It was so tiring. It felt like every second poem could have been called "Love and death". In the introduction to this book, Elizabeth Jennings (the "chooser" of the choice of Rosetti's verse) gave the disclaimer that Rosetti wrote very few happy poems, but I still wasn't prepared for this.
I've given it two stars because I still love The Goblin Market, because I picked up a couple other gems (e.g. Maude Clare), and because I really enjoyed how tightly Rosetti captured a sense of rhythm in all her poems, which made them really fun to read out loud. I would recommend that anyone who wants to read some Rosetti stick to the 10 or so poems that seem to have made it into the English literature canon.
If you can't tell this from my rating: this didn't end up being the enjoyable experience. The book started off with The Goblin Market (yay!), which was then followed by some other, slightly more vengeful but still enjoyable poems like Maude Clare and Cousin Kate. What followed after this brief period of bliss was what I can only describe as the Victorian equivalent of the tumblr page of a 16 year old emo kid. All the poems fall into a couple categories:
- I act like I am happy around other people, but then go upstairs and cry in my room.
- My life sucks, but since I am good and they are bad things will go well for me in heaven
- You like her instead of me? Jokes on you: she's a hussy.
- Springtime is a period of growth, but I am in emotional winter right now.
The latter 60% of the book was devoted exclusively to these themes. It was so tiring. It felt like every second poem could have been called "Love and death". In the introduction to this book, Elizabeth Jennings (the "chooser" of the choice of Rosetti's verse) gave the disclaimer that Rosetti wrote very few happy poems, but I still wasn't prepared for this.
I've given it two stars because I still love The Goblin Market, because I picked up a couple other gems (e.g. Maude Clare), and because I really enjoyed how tightly Rosetti captured a sense of rhythm in all her poems, which made them really fun to read out loud. I would recommend that anyone who wants to read some Rosetti stick to the 10 or so poems that seem to have made it into the English literature canon.
November 29, 2019
I haven't read Christina Rossetti in over 20 years, but I found her quite moving, especially her poems about death and love. I was surprised that there were so many devoutly Christian poems--I don't remember that from studying her in grad school. There is a bittersweetness to her work, which I presume to believe stems from unrequited love, that I find touching.
February 23, 2025
Will never shut about the fact Saoirse signed my copy!!!
April 4, 2025
im an atheist so this did nothing for me
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews