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 Sort descending Author name Excerpt
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, 1985.
97
death Elizabeth Siddal
Rossetti engaged in memorializing his wife in a number of ways. He attempted to have her poetry published in one of his sister Christina 's volumes, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems.
Marsh, Jan. The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal. Quartet Books, 1989.
199
Dedications Katharine Tynan
KT 's second poetry volume, Shamrocks (dedicated to William and Christina Rossetti ), was said to be one of the earliest attempts to make use of Ossianic material in Anglo-Irish poetry.
Boyd, Ernest. Ireland’s Literary Renaissance. Grant Richards, 1922.
104-5
Tynan, Katharine. Shamrocks. Kegan Paul, Trench, 1887.
prelims
Yeats, W. B. Letters to Katharine Tynan. Editor McHugh, Roger, Clonmore and Reynolds, 1953.
26-7, 29
Education Mary Gawthorpe
Like all her siblings but one, MG had been taught to read before she went to the local Church of England infants' school, St Michael's, at the age of five.
Gawthorpe, Mary. Up Hill to Holloway. Traversity Press, 1962.
19
The whole family had...
Family and Intimate relationships Dante Gabriel Rossetti
His father was the Italian political exile Gabriele Pasquale Guiseppe Rossetti . His mother, born Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori , was half-Italian. He had an elder sister, Maria Francesca , and two younger siblings who...
Family and Intimate relationships Anna Eliza Bray
She was Christina Rossetti 's cousin.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
Marsh, Jan. “Christian Rossetti’s Vocation: The Importance of Goblin Market”. Victorian Poetry, Vol.
32
, No. 3-4, 1994, 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...
Family and Intimate relationships Ford Madox Ford
Christina Rossetti was his aunt, and her brothers his uncles, through the marriage of William Michael Rossetti .
Friends, Associates Bessie Rayner Parkes
Beginning in 1854, BRP and Barbara Leigh Smith participated in a society called the Portfolio Club in order to exhibit and share comment on their own and other women's artistic and literary creations. Other members...
Friends, Associates Harriet Martineau
Anna Letitia Barbauld visited HM 's mother from time to time. HM was impressed by the stamp of superiority on all she said.
Martineau, Harriet, and Gaby Weiner. Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography. Virago, 1983, 2 vols.
1: 302
Barbauld's niece Lucy Aikin was another family friend. One acquaintance...
Friends, Associates Violet Hunt
Friends of VH 's family included John Ruskin , Edward Burne-Jones , John Millais , Dante Gabriel Rossetti , Robert Browning , and Christina Rossetti , who read Violet's early poems. VH also met and...
Friends, Associates Jean Ingelow
JI met Christina Rossetti , with whom she and Dora Greenwell came to share a unique literary and personal friendship.
Rossetti, Christina. The Letters of Christina Rossetti. Editor Harrison, Antony H., University Press of Virginia, 1997–2004, 4 vols.
190, 203
Friends, Associates Dora Greenwell
Greenlow also became a friend of Christina Rossetti after sending her a fan letter.
There is some debate as to the date of their first contact. Janet Gray says that DG sent Rossetti the gift...
Friends, Associates Ellen Wood
As she began to establish herself as a writer, EW became a friend of her fellow authors Anna Maria Hall , Julia Kavanagh , and Mary Howitt . The latter wrote her a complimentary letter...
Friends, Associates Katharine Tynan
Among those who frequented KT 's salon were George Russell (Æ), Irish Nationalist and Fenian leader John O'Leary , Gaelic scholar and revivalist Douglas Hyde (founder of the Gaelic League , 1893), and George Sigerson
Friends, Associates Augusta Webster
She made her entry into the city's literary circles with the assistance of Theodore Watts , later Theodore Watts-Dunton, who was a great supporter of her work and later a colleague at the Athenæum...

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.
Rose, Jonathan, and Patricia J. Anderson, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 106. Gale Research, 1991.
106: 230

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.
Smith, Sean, archivist. “Letter from George Bernard Shaw to Lady Welby, Oct. 16, 1907”. York University: York University Gazette online: From the archives, 26 Jan. 2000.
Myers, William Andrew. “Victoria, Lady Welby 1837-1912”. Contemporary Women Philosophers, 1900-Today, edited by Mary Ellen Waithe, Kluwer, 1995, pp. 1-24.
4

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. New ed., 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. New and enlarged ed., 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, 3 vols.
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, 4 vols.
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.