What do you think?
Rate this book
Christina Rossetti
A beautifully illustrated gift book edition of Rossetti's musical nineteenth-century poetry includes such familiar works as ""Repining,"" ""A Birthday,"" ""Amor Mundi,"" and ""Goblin Market.""
Hardcover
First published November 6, 1986
27 people are currently reading
1406 people want to read
About the author
Christina Rossetti
340 books563 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 - 30 of 49 reviews
May 14, 2008
This poem is simply beautiful.......
Remember
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Christina Georgina Rossetti
Remember
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Christina Georgina Rossetti
June 7, 2009
Passing away the bliss,
The anguish passing away:
Thus it is
Today.
Clean past away the sorrow,
The pleasure brought back to stay:
Thus and this
Tomorrow.
(Passing)
The anguish passing away:
Thus it is
Today.
Clean past away the sorrow,
The pleasure brought back to stay:
Thus and this
Tomorrow.
(Passing)
March 26, 2024
British lit
February 23, 2025
I have read
'Song'
'winter: my secret'
'In an artist's studio'
'A birthday'
'Uphill'
'Goblin market'
For uni and wanted to include it
'Song'
'winter: my secret'
'In an artist's studio'
'A birthday'
'Uphill'
'Goblin market'
For uni and wanted to include it
October 27, 2023
I’ve fallen in love with Christina Rossetti’s poetry. Her work is simply enchanting. My favorite poems from this collection were Goblin Market, Maiden Song, and Child’s Talk in April. As a whole, this is one of the best poetry collections I’ve read. This compilation explores the themes of seasons, love, death, heaven, grief, and redemption. The pieces were lyrically exquisite and thematically moving. Additionally, Florence Harrison’s art was breathtaking and fit so well with the poetry.
February 20, 2025
Some of Christina Rossetti’s poetry I really like, but most is too sentimental and Victorian for me. This collection did not have many that I particularly liked, but the children especially loved The Queen of Hearts, A Christmas Carol, In the Lane, and Looking Forward.
November 29, 2022
Goblin market= major slay
December 25, 2023
A nice little window into the works of this poet, accompanied by some lovely Pre-Raphaelite art.
April 2, 2024
Laura and lizzie... 3 marriage proposals rejected.. poems all about secrets.. yet she had us all fooled.
January 9, 2025
some ladies dressed in muslin and an apple gathering are my favs from this anthology!! :)
January 8, 2026
queen❤️
March 17, 2010
Christina Rosetti's poems are masterpieces, a voice of her age and (not just women) but the people of her time- Rosetti takes you on a sea of emotions and lets you down gentle feeling rejuvenated and smiling. I love her poems and "Remember" is my ABSOLUTE favourite poem (That and 2If" by Rudyard Kipling). I never think about death the same way, only Rosetti's poetry has that power. Must read her poems to truly be a balanced poet and poem-reader.
August 11, 2013
There were some beautiful poems in this collection, but there were a larger number of obscure sacred ones. I think I would stick with her selected works next time.
December 13, 2023
Que hermoso que escribía esta mujer. Y amé los poemas que tenían un tono más religioso.
August 3, 2024
Reading for English A Level.
Simply beautiful. I urge everyone to read about her life and other contextual factors that only further enhance her writing. So ahead of her time.
Simply beautiful. I urge everyone to read about her life and other contextual factors that only further enhance her writing. So ahead of her time.
August 9, 2025
Christina Rossetti: The Illustrated Poets (1986)
Emotionally charged poems and contemporary artwork make a delightfully charming little pocket-sized hard-cover book. Wonderful!
MEMORY:
Echo - Wonderful poem, heartache for a deceased friend. “.. Pulse for pulse, breath for breath..”
Remember - Bold, determined, and deeply committed to the relationship(s) she cherishes. "Remember me when I am gone away / Gone far away into the silent land / When you can no more hold me by the hand / Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay."
Song (When I am dead..) - Romanticism "And if thou wilt, remember / And if thou wilt, forget."
One Sea-Side Grave - Powerful - “Unmindful .. Unmindful .. And all the rest forget / But one remembers yet.”
Memory - What an opening - “I nursed it in my bosom while it lived / I hid it in my heart when it was dead.”
TEMPTATION:
Goblin Market - Famous dark poem that echoes the Biblical Proverbs chapter 9, about the delusions that follow illusion. I imagine Jim Henson making Muppet creatures of these characters!
The World - moon, serpents, fruits, flowers, beast, monster, horns, friend, soul, youth, hell .. such evocative metaphors.
Amor Mundi - How she writes! - “The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right.”
DEATH:
Summer is Ended - Mournful - “Bent we cannot re-bend.”
A Dirge - Beautiful, sweet, smart
Untitled - “They lie at rest, our blessed dead.”
Two Thoughts of Death - “Foul worms .. Foul worms .. These worms ..”
Life and death - “.. flitting butterfly ..”
After Death - Wow, POV from the corpse. “.. very sweet it is / To know he still is warm tho' I am cold.”
A Portrait - Poem of commitment - “Counting all earthly gain but hurt and loss / So with calm will she chose and bore the cross / And hated all for love of Jesus Christ.”
LOVE:
Song (Two doves..) - Two doves, two lilies, two butterflies
A Birthday - Expressive gratitude for love, “My heart is like…”
Grown and Flown - “I loved my love .. I loved my love .. I loved my love ..”
Maude Clare - “Out of the church she followed them ..”
Twice - “My broken heart in my hand .. / My hope was written on sand.”
No, Thank You, John - Personal, honest and brave, you just have to read it yourself.
A Triad - “Three sang of love together..”
A Pause - Like ‘Song of Songs 5:2’ - “My thirsty soul kept watch for one away -”
TIME:
A Better Resurrection - Wow, similar to Psalm 51 - “My life is like a faded leaf .. My life is like a frozen thing .. My life is like a broken bowl .. Melt and remould it, till it be / A royal cup for Him, my King: / O Jesus, drink of me.”
Beauty is Vain - “Time will win the race ..”
The Bourne - She often opens with a punchy word that is repeated - “Underneath .. Underneath..”
One Certainty - Echoes Ecclesiastes
Withering - She often opens with a punchy word that is repeated - “Fade .. Fade .. Fade ..”
Bitter for Sweet - “Summer .. Autumn .. Winter ..”
Endurance - “Good deeds are many, but good lives are few.”
Vanity of Vanities - “It shall say till the mighty angel-blast / Is blown, making the sun and moon aghast.”
May - “When May was young, ah pleasant May!”
Song (Oh roses ..) - “Oh roses for the flush of youth ../ Oh violets for the grave of youth.”
HOPES & WISHES:
Somewhere or Other - A beautiful poem of longing.
What Would I Give - “What would I give for a heart .. What would I give for words .. What would I give for tears!”
In an Artist’s Studio - Sweet, simple observations. The rhyming pattern is ABBA, ABBA, CDCD, CB
From The Antique - The unfair despair of being a woman.
Promises like Piecrust - No pies are eaten or mentioned in this poem. It is really good. I love the theme, "Promise me no promises / So will I not promise you / Keep we both our liberties / Never false and never true." From here it builds in its profundity.
L.E.L. - “My heart that breakesth for a little love.” ***
A Wish - “I wish I were a .. I wish I were a ..”
Fata Morgana - “A blue-eyed phantom ..”
Couplet - a soldier poem **
Emotionally charged poems and contemporary artwork make a delightfully charming little pocket-sized hard-cover book. Wonderful!
MEMORY:
Echo - Wonderful poem, heartache for a deceased friend. “.. Pulse for pulse, breath for breath..”
Remember - Bold, determined, and deeply committed to the relationship(s) she cherishes. "Remember me when I am gone away / Gone far away into the silent land / When you can no more hold me by the hand / Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay."
Song (When I am dead..) - Romanticism "And if thou wilt, remember / And if thou wilt, forget."
One Sea-Side Grave - Powerful - “Unmindful .. Unmindful .. And all the rest forget / But one remembers yet.”
Memory - What an opening - “I nursed it in my bosom while it lived / I hid it in my heart when it was dead.”
TEMPTATION:
Goblin Market - Famous dark poem that echoes the Biblical Proverbs chapter 9, about the delusions that follow illusion. I imagine Jim Henson making Muppet creatures of these characters!
The World - moon, serpents, fruits, flowers, beast, monster, horns, friend, soul, youth, hell .. such evocative metaphors.
Amor Mundi - How she writes! - “The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right.”
DEATH:
Summer is Ended - Mournful - “Bent we cannot re-bend.”
A Dirge - Beautiful, sweet, smart
Untitled - “They lie at rest, our blessed dead.”
Two Thoughts of Death - “Foul worms .. Foul worms .. These worms ..”
Life and death - “.. flitting butterfly ..”
After Death - Wow, POV from the corpse. “.. very sweet it is / To know he still is warm tho' I am cold.”
A Portrait - Poem of commitment - “Counting all earthly gain but hurt and loss / So with calm will she chose and bore the cross / And hated all for love of Jesus Christ.”
LOVE:
Song (Two doves..) - Two doves, two lilies, two butterflies
A Birthday - Expressive gratitude for love, “My heart is like…”
Grown and Flown - “I loved my love .. I loved my love .. I loved my love ..”
Maude Clare - “Out of the church she followed them ..”
Twice - “My broken heart in my hand .. / My hope was written on sand.”
No, Thank You, John - Personal, honest and brave, you just have to read it yourself.
A Triad - “Three sang of love together..”
A Pause - Like ‘Song of Songs 5:2’ - “My thirsty soul kept watch for one away -”
TIME:
A Better Resurrection - Wow, similar to Psalm 51 - “My life is like a faded leaf .. My life is like a frozen thing .. My life is like a broken bowl .. Melt and remould it, till it be / A royal cup for Him, my King: / O Jesus, drink of me.”
Beauty is Vain - “Time will win the race ..”
The Bourne - She often opens with a punchy word that is repeated - “Underneath .. Underneath..”
One Certainty - Echoes Ecclesiastes
Withering - She often opens with a punchy word that is repeated - “Fade .. Fade .. Fade ..”
Bitter for Sweet - “Summer .. Autumn .. Winter ..”
Endurance - “Good deeds are many, but good lives are few.”
Vanity of Vanities - “It shall say till the mighty angel-blast / Is blown, making the sun and moon aghast.”
May - “When May was young, ah pleasant May!”
Song (Oh roses ..) - “Oh roses for the flush of youth ../ Oh violets for the grave of youth.”
HOPES & WISHES:
Somewhere or Other - A beautiful poem of longing.
What Would I Give - “What would I give for a heart .. What would I give for words .. What would I give for tears!”
In an Artist’s Studio - Sweet, simple observations. The rhyming pattern is ABBA, ABBA, CDCD, CB
From The Antique - The unfair despair of being a woman.
Promises like Piecrust - No pies are eaten or mentioned in this poem. It is really good. I love the theme, "Promise me no promises / So will I not promise you / Keep we both our liberties / Never false and never true." From here it builds in its profundity.
L.E.L. - “My heart that breakesth for a little love.” ***
A Wish - “I wish I were a .. I wish I were a ..”
Fata Morgana - “A blue-eyed phantom ..”
Couplet - a soldier poem **
March 24, 2025
Centering my review on "Goblin Market", which is wonderful and strange and frightening for a poem about young girls. I didn't like it as much on this reading, and I'm not sure why--I think I'd built it up in my mind as greater than it is. Tho, it is very great. Harold Bloom says slyly that this one poem of hers goes against her grain of renunciation, and flows full on into temptation fulfilled. I don't read any allegory or symbolism in it, because I don't want to. I want to take it as a wondrous fairy-tale of loving sisters, through thick and thin. I'd love to memorize the whole thing, because I suspect that in speaking it aloud (to an audience!) it would be like an incantatory spell, and it ends with such an emotional crescendo. I do love it.
But I don't need a whole book of C. Rossetti poems. Her others are just good, in the limited selection I read. They are Housman-like in a way of looking back, and "remember me" style--or a Dickinson-like poetry from the grave. Give me "Goblin Market" all day!
But I don't need a whole book of C. Rossetti poems. Her others are just good, in the limited selection I read. They are Housman-like in a way of looking back, and "remember me" style--or a Dickinson-like poetry from the grave. Give me "Goblin Market" all day!
July 6, 2017
It was nice to read through some old poems I already knew and discover some new ones!! however, I really hated this book edition!! Goblin market, in my opinion one of Rossetti's best poems, was abridged along with some of her other longer poems! It just completely took away the emotion and message from those poems which really upset me. In addition, the "illustrations" I found did not match the poems and felt like they were just old paintings they put in (very much like those cheap paperback classics.) NO CLASSIC DESERVES THIS. NO BOOK DESERVES THIS. also the images were clearly printed cheaply, on one painting memorably I thought a woman was missing half of her face because her dark coloured hair blended into the background. Can't blame Rossetti for any of this, but she would probably also not be impressed.
Conclusion: always read Rossetti. never abridged, never in this edition.
Conclusion: always read Rossetti. never abridged, never in this edition.
November 28, 2025
A collection of poems from the noted English poet, Christina Rossetti, with interspersed color artwork draw by artist Florence Harrison. Miss Rossetti reposed in 1894 with the first edition of this book published in 1910 complete with the Harrison's illustrations.
The New York publishers of this particular 1994 book, for their own reasons, included little of the Christian poetry for which Rossetti is known. But still it's an attractive book which I was glad to purchase for my own library.
A more balanced anthology of the poet's work can be found in the far scarcer book, Christina Rossetti: Passion & Devotion, published in London by Brockhampton Press in 1998.
The New York publishers of this particular 1994 book, for their own reasons, included little of the Christian poetry for which Rossetti is known. But still it's an attractive book which I was glad to purchase for my own library.
A more balanced anthology of the poet's work can be found in the far scarcer book, Christina Rossetti: Passion & Devotion, published in London by Brockhampton Press in 1998.
Read
June 2, 2025Rossetti's poems have an essence of self strained conformity as well as tragic flaws where her persona cracks through the speakers in her poems. Rossetti was part or the victorian female poets movement where poets such as herself along with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, and the Brontë's. These female poets all have an overwhelming sense of unspoken isolation following their predicament of being women in a heavily male dominated field. Rossetti seems to be reliant of powerful institutions and not only welcomes her submission but also punishes herself when she's not.
October 19, 2021
These are really beautiful poems. Even though I'm not Christian I can feel how passionate she is about life and I like the way she can use her religion to express that. She's a master of rhyme and always chooses interesting words. She must have been an interesting person to know, when you read her you get a sense of a very intense personality.
January 13, 2022
Just splendid. You can really tell how uncomfortable Christina Rossetti was with her existence. She painted such beautiful scenes with her words and portrayed what it would be like existing as a woman in the 1800s. The substance of these poems have also made me realise how much the world has evolved over the past 200 years
April 11, 2021
My favorites include “A Birthday” which is such a wonderful poem for hopeful new beginnings, especially in today’s world, “The City Mouse and the Garden Mouse” and “Frog and Toad.” I could spend ten years studying “The Goblin Market” and never fully understand what it means. The Victorians!
July 10, 2023
Love this author and her poems. I love how she really showed her views and it really shined through in her poems. It would have taken an incredibly strong women to have published poems such as Goblin market in her time, but I am proud she did
July 17, 2025
Sus poemas y cuentos amorosos me parecieron muy bien construidos y con imágenes maravillosas, especialmente los que jamás se publicaron, pero los religiosos fueron cansados, pero algo llamativos porque su padre fue exiliado de Italia por no serlo.
December 24, 2022
leí amor mundi
February 13, 2023
A couple of worthwhile poems among a large number that I didn’t like. To me Rosetti’s themes are quite repetitive and depressingly victorian, DNF @ 30%
April 12, 2023
girlboss
April 14, 2023
every poem is so misogynistic and conservative that at some point they become feminist and seem enlightening. the very definition of sometimes a person goes so far right they end up left.
May 6, 2023
Not sure if I hated this book as much as my 1 star review reflects, or if it was just that this audiobook’s reader was awful. His sing song voice and strange intonations ruined it.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews