Christina Rossetti

1830-1894
1. Unconventional environment in childhood home
  1. Highly politicised atmosphere
  2. Home-schooled with sister by mother
  3. Lit. and poetry essential to household
    1. Early influences:
      1. Keats
      2. Pope
      3. Walter Scott
      4. Dante Alighieri
      5. Charles Maturin
2. Followed mother's religion
  1. Devout Anglo-Catholics
    1. Strong relationship with God
3. Developed depression in adolescence
  1. Suffered a breakdown in 1845, aged 15
4. Various romantic affairs
  1. Did not marry
    1. Died of Graves' disease
Poetic features
1. Both secular and devotional
  1. 'Imaginative arenas where gods meet mankind'
    1. Conflicts drawn on a small scale
      1. Ordinary daily events transformed by magical potential
2. Fairytale worlds
  1. Fascinating to Victorian readers
3. Feminist principles
  1. Significance of sisterhood
  2. Female resistance & empowerment
4. Themes
  1. Rejected/unrequited love
  2. Hope in grief
  3. Resignation to will of God
  4. Reserved anguish
5. Precisely honed craftmanship
  1. Complex ideas within formal confines
6. Veiled social criticism
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
1. Set up by brother Dante Gabriel and friends
  1. Engaged to James Collinson
    1. Irreconcilable religious differences
2. Christina's poems published in magazine, 1850
  1. Garnered critical praise
  2. Otherwise peripheral presence
Publication & success
1. Devotional prose-works very popular
  1. A way for theological women to participate in clergy discussions
2. Goblin Market and Other Poems
  1. Critical and commercial success
  2. Reclaiming of 'fallen' women
  3. Women's place in lit. marketplace negotiated by men - challenged
3. Some work not published until 1979
4. Often presented her work as for children

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Christina Rossetti

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	Created by Kathryn Kilby over 8 years ago