View source for Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 (London) - 5 December 1894 (London). English poet.

Christina Georgina Rossetti, pseudonym Ellen Alleyne, was the youngest child of Frances Rossetti and the Italian poet and scholar at Kings’s College Gabriele Rossetti who immigrated to England in 1824. Her siblings were Maria Francesca, [[Dante Gabriel Rossetti|Gabriel Charles Dante]], and William Michael. Maria Francesca was an expert on [[Dante Alighieri]] and writer of books on religion and the Italian language. Gabriel Charles Dante, who is better known under the name Dante Gabriel, became a well-known poet and painter and William Michael was a successful critic on literature and arts and was the founder of the [[Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood]]. Christina Rossetti also had a strong connection to the Pre-Raphaelites and authored many works of poetry, for example ''Goblin Market and other Poems'' (1862), ''The Prince’s Progress'' (1866), ''A Pageant'' (1881), and ''The Face of the Deep'' (1882).

Christina Rossetti’s poetry was influenced by the [[Oxford Movement]] or Tractarianism because she and her family turned to an Anglo-Catholic faith. Rossetti therefore wrote poetry and prose on the instability of human love in contrast to the love of God, on self-renunciation, and the demerits of human beings. In 1871 Rossetti was diagnosed with Grave’s disease, in Germany better known as Morbus Basedow, an autoimmune disorder which had negative effects on her physical appearance and moreover caused a constant threat to her life. Because she was of ill health readers very often claim to observe a certain morbidity in her works.


== Sources ==

“Christina Rossetti.” FemBio Frauen Biographieforschung, 2021. https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/biographie/christina-rossetti/. Accessed 6 January 2021.

“Christina Rossetti. 1830-1894.” Poetry Foundation, 2021, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/christina-rossetti. Accessed 6 January 2021.

“Christina Rossetti. English poet.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christina-Rossetti. Accessed 6 January 2021.

McCarthy, Anne C. ''Awful Parenthesis. Suspension and the Sublime in Romantic and Victorian Poetry.'' University of Toronto Press, 2018.