Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Christina Rossetti
-
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.
Its inaugural issues included several signed articles by her. She also enlisted contributions from Bessie Rayner Parkes
, including an article she had previously published in the English Woman's Journal. IC
also arranged for...
Textual Production
Willa Cather
WC
collected short stories in a volume entitled The Troll Garden, whose title-page quotes Christina Rossetti
's Goblin Market.
Urgo, Joseph R., and Willa Cather. “Introduction. Willa Cather: A Brief Chronology. A Note on the Text”. My Ántonia, edited by Joseph R. Urgo and Joseph R. Urgo, Broadview Press, pp. 9-39.
34
Lee, Hermione. Willa Cather: A Life Saved Up. Virago.
14
Textual Production
Willa Cather
In the 1920s WC
was working for a maximum of three hours a day, banishing her work from her mind during the rest of day, but keeping herself fresh for it. She said her only...
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
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.
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
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...
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
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...
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...
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press.
97
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.