Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) was one of the great English poets of the Victorian age. Sister of the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, she wrote Goblin Market, a strange and haunting fairy-tale poem, lyrics such as Remember and Song, the children's verses of Sing-Song and the words of the carol In the Bleak Midwinter.
Works
Goblin Market and Other Poems
A family of artists
Christina Georgina Rossetti was born in London in 1830, the youngest of four children of Gabriele Rossetti, an Italian poet and political exile who taught at King's College, and Frances Polidori. All four children wrote: her brothers Dante Gabriel and William Michael became leading figures of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
Christina wrote poems from childhood; her grandfather printed a small volume of them when she was seventeen. She sat as a model for her brother's paintings, notably as the Virgin Mary in The Girlhood of Mary Virgin.
Goblin Market
In 1862 she published Goblin Market and Other Poems, with illustrations by Dante Gabriel. The title poem tells of two sisters, Laura and Lizzie, tempted by goblin merchants selling magical fruit; Laura eats and wastes away, and Lizzie saves her. Its rhythms and its rich imagery made it a success.
She twice refused offers of marriage, to the painter James Collinson and later to the scholar Charles Cayley, partly for religious reasons. For many years she worked as a volunteer at a refuge for women who had been forced into prostitution.
Later years
The Prince's Progress and Other Poems followed in 1866, and Sing-Song, a book of nursery rhymes, in 1872. Her health was poor, and in 1871 she developed Graves' disease, which changed her appearance. In later life she wrote mainly religious poetry and devotional prose.
She lived quietly in London with her mother and, after her mother's death, alone. She died of cancer in 1894. Her poem In the Bleak Midwinter, set to music by Gustav Holst and Harold Darke, has become one of the best-loved Christmas carols in England.
Anecdotes
A model for her brother
Christina was the model for the Virgin Mary in her brother Dante Gabriel's first major painting, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849), and again in Ecce Ancilla Domini! (1850), both now in the Tate Gallery.
The best carol
In 2008 a poll of choirmasters and choral experts named In the Bleak Midwinter, with words by Christina Rossetti, the greatest Christmas carol of all time.
Frequently asked questions
What are Christina Rossetti's most famous poems?
Goblin Market, Remember, Song (When I am dead, my dearest), Up-Hill, A Birthday and In the Bleak Midwinter.
What is Goblin Market about?
Two sisters, one of whom eats the enchanted fruit of goblin merchants and falls ill, and the other who saves her by facing the goblins herself.
Was Christina Rossetti a Pre-Raphaelite?
She was closely linked to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood through her brothers and published in its magazine, The Germ, though the brotherhood itself was all male.