Christina Rossetti
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Christina Georgina Rossetti (December 5, 1830 - December 29, 1894) was an English poet and the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Their father, Gabriele Rossetti, was a political asylum seeker from Naples, and their mother, Frances Polidori, was the sister of Lord Byron's friend and physician, John William Polidori.
Born in London and educated privately, she suffered ill-health in her youth, but was already writing poetry in her teens. Her engagement to a painter, James Collinson, was broken off because of religious differences (she was High Church Anglican). This experience is credited with inspiring her most popular poem 'Remember'. She refused to marry Charles Cayley, whom she was deeply in love with, because of religious reasons.
Many of her poems were written for children. "Goblin Market" seemed like a children's nursery rhyme with its talk of goblins. However, it was really an allegory for temptation. It is similiar to the story of the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve.
Christina rejected the social world of her brother's "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood", preferring "my shady crevice -- which crevice enjoys the unique advantage of being to my certain knowledge the place assigned me."
External Links
- Christina Rossetti (http://www.poetseers.org/the_great_poets/br/rossetti/) - Biography and Poems
- Christina Rossetti at Victorian Web (http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/crossetti/crov.html)
A Bibliography
- Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862)
- The Prince's Progress and Other Poems (1866)
- Sing-Song: a Nursery Rhyme Book (1872, 1893)nl:Christina Georgina Rossetti