Christina Rossetti

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Standard Name: Rossetti, Christina
Birth Name: Christina Georgina Rossetti
Pseudonym: C. G. R.
Pseudonym: Ellen Alleyne
Pseudonym: Calta
Nickname: Sister Christina
CR wrote and published poetry ranging from religious poetry, love lyrics, and sonnets to narrative and dramatic verse. She published five successive volumes of verse, three collected editions, and many individual poems in anthologies and periodicals, from the 1840s until her death in the 1890s. She occupies a liminal position in relation to the Pre-Raphaelite movement: deeply influenced by and indebted to it, she developed a voice and preoccupations in many respects distinct from those of its male members, partly because of her equally strong absorption in the High AnglicanOxford Movement. Goblin Market, the poem for which she is best known, has frequently been re-issued as a children's fable, but has also been convincingly read as a complex exploration of religion, gender, and sexuality. Some of her other verse was specifically aimed at children. Her attempts at prose fiction, of which a volume appeared in her lifetime and another posthumously, were not as well received as her poetry. CR 's devotional writing, which intensified towards the end of her life, includes hymns and other religious verse, as well as six volumes of religious commentary presented from a distinctively female standpoint. A writer who combined abiding interest in symbol and correspondence with stylistic austerity and metrical innovation that presaged modernism, CR is recognised as one of the major poets of the Victorian period.

Connections

Connections Author name Sort descending Excerpt
Textual Production Lady Cynthia Asquith
Cynthia Asquith published her autobiographical Haply I May Remember, titled with a phrase from Christina Rossetti 's poem beginning When I am dead my dearest.
Asquith, Lady Cynthia. Haply I May Remember. James Barrie.
title page
Textual Production Lady Cynthia Asquith
Two years after her first volume of autobiography appeared, Cynthia Asquith published Remember and Be Glad, a second book of memories, whose title draws again on the same love-poem by Christina Rossetti .
Hone, Robin. “Snapshot Portraits”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 2623, p. 315.
315
Asquith, Lady Cynthia. Remember and Be Glad. James Barrie.
title page
Leisure and Society Isabella Banks
Despite increasing poverty, the family socialised widely: Christina Rossetti called IB 's Sunday evening gatherings at home attractively unceremonious.
Burney, Edward Lester. Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks. E. J. Morten.
84
Reception Isabella Banks
By the age of twenty-one IB was a poetess of some local repute in and around Manchester.
Burney, Edward Lester. Mrs. G. Linnaeus Banks. E. J. Morten.
32
Her biographer E. L. Burney notes that both Eliza Cook and Christina Rossetti corresponded with her...
Cultural formation Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Barbara Leigh Smith , Christina Rossetti , Elizabeth Siddal , Bessie Rayner Parkes , Anna Mary Howitt , and Mary Howitt conducted a series of seances at the Hermitage, the Howitt family home.
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press.
97
Textual Features Lilian Bowes Lyon
Her characteristic style in these early poems is one of simplicity: many evoke the landscape of Northumberland. Creatures or people in them are intensely individual, yet represent a truth beyond themselves. The title poem...
Literary responses Lilian Bowes Lyon
Cecil Day-Lewis later took this volume to represent, alone, her early period. He found it clean in outline, of a decisive, spontaneous simplicity at its best . . . but never flat.He noted her...
Intertextuality and Influence Caroline Bowles
Scholar Margaret M. Morlier argues that The Young Grey Head influenced Christina Rossetti 's Goblin Market. Morlier argues that Rossetti's poem revises the specific scene of fever delirium but features an similarly afflicted sister...
Family and Intimate relationships Anna Eliza Bray
She was Christina Rossetti 's cousin.
Sutherland, John. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press.
Marsh, Jan. “Christian Rossetti’s Vocation: The Importance of Goblin Market”. Victorian Poetry, Vol.
32
, No. 3-4, pp. 233-48.
235
There is some dispute over their exact relation. In the notes to her collected poems, Rossetti calls AEB her cousin. Scholars John Sutherland and Jan Marsh also refer...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anna Eliza Bray
The work contained his thoughts on Christina Rossetti 's Verses. Rossetti scholar Jan Marsh suggests that his commentary privately embarrassed the younger poet.
Marsh, Jan. “Christian Rossetti’s Vocation: The Importance of Goblin Market”. Victorian Poetry, Vol.
32
, No. 3-4, pp. 233-48.
236, 247n10
Intertextuality and Influence Anna Eliza Bray
Christina Rossetti later noted that her poem Goblin Market, which was originally titled A Peep at the Goblins, was an imitation of my cousin Mrs. Bray's A Peep at the Pixies.
Chapman, Alison. The Afterlife of Christina Rossetti. MacMillan.
77
Textual Production A. S. Byatt
She thought of the title and the central idea for the novel in the British Library, watching that great Coleridge scholar, Kathleen Coburn , and thinking of the poet possessing his critic, and of the...
Textual Production Rosa Nouchette Carey
Rosa Nouchette Carey published 'No Friend Like a Sister', a novel whose title she quoted from Christina Rossetti 's Goblin Market.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
244 (14 September 1906): 310
Intertextuality and Influence Rosa Nouchette Carey
The chapter-headings of this novel are mostly from male writers, but among them is Christina Rossetti . The story begins with several deaths, most notably that of Lady Car Lorimer, strong-minded and beloved wife of...
Textual Production Dora Carrington
DC wrote excitedly to artist Stephen Tomlin about a possible collaboration (ultimately unrealized) on a ballet inspired by Christina Rossetti 's poem Goblin Market.
Hill, Jane, and Michael Holroyd. The Art of Dora Carrington. Herbert Press.
130, 137

Timeline

1832: Joseph Henry Parker took over his uncle's...

Writing climate item

1832

Joseph Henry Parker took over his uncle's Oxford bookselling and publishing business; as J. H. Parker it soon became the foremost publisher of the Oxford or Tractarian Movement.

1897: With her publication of Grains of Sense,...

Women writers item

1897

With her publication of Grains of Sense, philosopher Victoria, Lady Welby , shifted from theology towards a more academic and analytic study of meaning.

Texts

Rossetti, Christina. A Pageant, and Other Poems. Macmillan, 1881.
Rossetti, Christina. Annus Domini. Editor Burrows, Henry William, James Parker, 1874.
Rossetti, Christina, and Andrew Motion. Commonplace. Hesperus, 2005.
Rossetti, Christina. Commonplace, and Other Short Stories. F. S. Ellis, 1870.
Rossetti, Christina. Goblin Market and Other Poems. Macmillan, 1862.
Rossetti, Christina, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Goblin Market, The Prince’s Progress, and Other Poems. Macmillan, 1875.
Rossetti, Christina. Letter and Spirit. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; E. and J. B. Young, 1883.
Rossetti, Christina, and William Michael Rossetti. Maude. Editor Crump, Rebecca W., J. Bowden, 1897.
Rossetti, Christina. Maude. Editor Crump, Rebecca W., Archon Books, 1976.
Rossetti, Christina, and Dinah Mulock Craik. Maude; On Sisterhoods; A Woman’s Thoughts about Women. Editor Showalter, Elaine, New York University Press, 1993.
Rossetti, Christina. “Memoir; Notes”. The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti, edited by William Michael Rossetti, Norwood, 1979, pp. xlv - lxxi; 459.
Rossetti, Christina. New Poems. Editor Rossetti, William Michael, Macmillan, 1896.
Rossetti, Christina. Poems. Macmillan, 1890.
Rossetti, Christina. “Scope of This Edition”. The Letters of Christina Rossetti, edited by Antony H. Harrison, University Press of Virginia, 2004, p. 1: xiii - xv.
Rossetti, Christina. Seek and Find. Society for Promoting Christian knowledge; Pott, Young, 1879.
Rossetti, Christina, and Arthur Hughes. Sing-Song. George Routledge and Sons, 1872.
Rossetti, Christina, and Arthur Hughes. Speaking Likenesses. Macmillan, 1874.
Rossetti, Christina. The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti. Editor Crump, Rebecca W., Louisiana State University Press, 1990.
Rossetti, Christina. The Face of the Deep. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; E. and J. B. Young, 1892.
Rossetti, Christina. The Family Letters of Christina Georgina Rossetti. Editor Rossetti, William Michael, Haskell House, 1968.
Rossetti, Christina. The Letters of Christina Rossetti. Editor Harrison, Antony H., University Press of Virginia, 2004.
Rossetti, Christina. “The Lowest Room”. Macmillan’s Magazine, Vol.
9
, pp. 436-9.
Rossetti, Christina. The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti. Editor Rossetti, William Michael, Macmillan, 1904.
Rossetti, Christina, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems. Macmillan, 1866.
Rossetti, Christina. Time Flies. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1885.