Born: 5 December 1830, United Kingdom
Died: 29 December 1894
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Ellen Alleyne
The following was excerpted from Woman: Her Position, Influence and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World. Designed and Arranged by William C. King. Published in 1900 by The King-Richardson Co. Copyright 1903 The King-Richardson Co.
Christina G. Rossetti, Poetess of the Spiritual Life
This woman, noted for her sweet spiritual poetry, was the daughter of Gabriele Rosetti, an Italian patriot, who took refuge in England from the troubles of his native land. He was made professor of Italian at King’s College. He wrote a commentary on Dante to show that the Inferno was chiefly political and anti-papal and that Beatrice was a symbolic personage.
Christina was born in London. When quite young her father fell ill and she bravely helped support the family by teaching. She was deeply religious and gave much time to church work when the circumstances of the family were easier.
Some of productions are, Goblin Market, Prince’s Progress, Speaking Likeness, Annus Domini, A Prayer for Each Day of the Year Founded on a Text of Holy Scripture, Seek and Find, Called to be Saints, and Time Flies.
A disappointment in love cast a shadow of melancholy over much of her writing. She was for many years an invalid and died of cancer.
In artistic construction and purity of diction she surpasses Mrs. Browning, with whom she has sometimes been compare.
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
Poetess. Younger daughter of Gabriele and Lavinia Rossetti.
Christina was born in Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London, in December, 1830. Her brother was Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the poet.
Christina enjoyed the same educational advantages as the rest of the family. Her first recorded verse, addressed to her mother on the latter’s birthday, was written in April, 1842, and was printed at the same time by her grandfather, Gaetano Polidori, at his private press. A little volume of verse was printed in the same manner in 1847, and when her brothers and their friends established The Germ in 1850, Christina, although only nineteen, contributed several poems of great beauty under the pseudonym of “Ellen Alleyne.” She took her full share in meeting the distressed circumstances which shortly befell the family through the illness of her father, and gave lessons in Italian, a language in which, like her brothers, she composed with as much freedom as in English. After a while she was able to devote herself to domestic duties and works of charity. Miss Rossetti’s temperament was profoundly religious and she found much congenial occupation in church work and the composition of devotional manuals and works of religious edification. As an ardent Italian patriot she could not well become a Roman Catholic, but her devotion assumed a high Anglican character. This had the unfortunate result of causing an estrangement between herself and her suitor.
This circumstance explains much that would otherwise be obscure in her poetry and accounts for the melancholy and even morbid character of most of it. In her first published volume Goblin Market and other Poems (1862) she attained a height which she never reached afterwards. Her Goblin Market is original in conception and style, and the structure is as imaginative as The Ancient Mariner. The Prince’s Progress (1866) and A Pageant (1881) are greatly inferior but are accompanied by poems of great lyrical beauty. Dream Life, L. E. L., An Apple Gathering, A Birthday, may be cited as examples of perfect lyrics, and there are many others. She had also a special vocation for the sonnet and her best examples rival her brother’s, gaining in ease and simplicity what they lose in stately magnificence. After writing Commonplace (stories) in 1870 and Sing Song (nursery rhymes) in 1872, she devoted herself mainly to the composition of works of religious edification, which obtained wide circulation. Christina Rossetti long led the life of an invalid. She died of cancer after a prolonged illness at her residence in Torrington Square, London, on December 29, 1894.
The following is excerpted from the Dictionary of National Biography, originally published between 1885 and 1900, by Smith, Elder & Co. It was written by Richard Garnett.
ROSSETTI, CHRISTINA GEORGINA (1830–1894), poetess, younger daughter of Gabriele and Frances Mary Lavinia Rossetti, was born in Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London, on 5 Dec. 1830. Some account of her father will be found in the memoir of her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti [q. v.] She enjoyed the same educational advantages as the rest of the family, and manifested similar precocity. Her first recorded verses, addressed to her mother on the latter’s birthday, were written on 27 April 1842, and were printed at the same time by her maternal grandfather, Gaetano Polidori (1764–1853), at his private press. A little volume of verse was printed in the same manner in 1847, and when her brothers and their friends established ‘The Germ,’ in 1850, Christina, though only nineteen, contributed several poems of great beauty, under the pseudonym of ‘Ellen Alleyne.’ She took her full share in meeting the distressed circumstances which shortly afterwards befell the family through the disablement of its head by illness, assisting her mother in teaching a day school at Camden Town and afterwards at Frome. Like her brothers, she composed freely in Italian, in which language several of her poems were written. After a while she was enabled to devote herself to domestic duties and works of charity.
Miss Rossetti’s temperament was profoundly religious, and she found much congenial occupation in church work and the composition of devotional manuals, and works of religious edification. As sympathizing (at least in early years) with the Italian cause, she was averse from Roman catholicism; but her devotion assumed a high Anglican character. This had the unfortunate result of causing an estrangement between herself and a suitor to whom she was deeply attached. This circumstance explains much that would otherwise be obscure in her poetry, and accounts for the melancholy and even morbid character of most of it. Few have expressed the agonies of disappointed and hopeless love with equal poignancy, and much of the same spirit pervades her devotional poetry also. In her first published volume, ‘Goblin Market and other Poems,’ with two designs by D. G. Rossetti (Cambridge and London, 1862), she attained a height which she never reached afterwards. Her ‘Goblin Market’ is original in conception, style, and structure, as imaginative as the ‘Ancient Mariner,’ and comparable only to Shakespeare for the insight shown into unhuman and yet spiritual natures. ‘The Prince’s Progress’ (1866) and ‘A Pageant’ (1881) are greatly inferior, but are, like ‘Goblin Market,’ accompanied by lyrical poems of great beauty. In many of these—perhaps most—the thought is either inadequate for a fine piece or is insufficiently wrought out; but when nature and art combine, the result is exquisite. ‘Dream Love,’ ‘An End,’ ‘L. E. L.,’ ‘A Birthday,’ ‘An Apple Gathering,’ may be cited as examples of the perfect lyric, and there are many others. She had also a special vocation for the sonnet, and her best examples rival her brother’s, gaining in ease and simplicity what they lose in stately magnificence. Except in ‘Goblin Market,’ however, she never approaches his imaginative or descriptive power. Everywhere else she is, like most poetesses, purely subjective, and in no respect creative. This, no less than the comparative narrowness of her sympathies, sets her below Mrs. Browning, to whom she has been sometimes preferred. At the same time, though by no means immaculate, she greatly excels that very careless writer in artistic construction and purity of diction.
Mrs. Browning, however, went on improving to the last day of her life, and the same can by no means be said of Christina Rossetti. After producing ‘Commonplace’ (stories) in 1870, ‘Sing Song’ (nursery rhymes) in 1872, and ‘Speaking Likenesses’ (tales for children) in 1874, she devoted herself mainly to the composition of works of religious edification, meritorious in their way, but scarcely affecting to be literature. They obtained, nevertheless, a wide circulation, and probably did more to popularise her name than a second ‘Goblin Market’ could have done. They include ‘Annus Domini’ (prayers), 1874; ‘Seek and Find,’ 1879; ‘Called to be Saints: the Minor Festivals,’ 1881; ‘Letter and Spirit,’ notes on the Commandments, 1882; ‘Time Flies: a Reading Diary,’ 1885; ‘The Face of the Deep: a Commentary on the Revelation,’ 1892, and ‘Verses,’ 1893.
Christina Rossetti long led the life of an invalid. For two years—from 1871 to 1873—her existence hung by a thread, from the attack of a rare and mysterious malady, ‘exophthalmic bronchocele,’ and her health was never again good. She died of cancer after a long illness at her residence in Torrington Square, London, on 29 Dec. 1894, and was buried at Highgate cemetery on 2 Jan. 1895. Her portrait, with that of her mother, drawn in tinted crayons by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Her unpublished poems, with many collected from periodicals, were printed by her surviving brother, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, in 1896 as ‘New Poems.’ Prefixed is a portrait of her at the age of eighteen, from a pencil sketch by her brother Dante. These verses are in most cases too slight in theme or too unfinished to add anything to her reputation. But Christina Rossetti’s character was so interesting, and her feeling so intense, that few of even her most unimportant lyrics are devoid of some touch of genius worthy of preservation. At the same time her reputation would certainly have stood higher if she had produced less or burned more. No excision, however, could have removed the taint of disease which clings to her most beautiful poetry, whether secular or religious, ‘Goblin Market’ excepted.
Her sister, Maria Francesca, (1827–1876), the oldest of the family, was born on 17 Feb. 1827. She was apparently the most practical of the group, and the most attentive to domestic concerns. She had a remarkable gift for educational work, and, besides two small Italian manuals, published ‘Letters to my Bible-Class on Thirty-nine Sundays,’ 1872. She was withheld in her early years from the religious life only by a strong sense of duty. According to her brother William she was ‘more warmly and spontaneously devotional than any person I have ever known.’ In 1873, the year preceding her brother William’s marriage, she felt at liberty to follow her inclination by entering a religious [Anglican] sisterhood at All Saints’ Home, Margaret Street. Her health soon failed, and she died there on 24 Nov. 1876, leaving, however, an adequate memorial of herself in ‘A Shadow of Dante: being an Essay towards studying himself, his World, and his Pilgrimage’ (1871), a manual highly valued by Dante scholars.
The following is excerpted from A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, written by John W. Cousins and published in 1929 by J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.
ROSSETTI, CHRISTINA GEORGINA (1830-1894). —Poetess, sister of Dante Gabriel R. (q.v.), was b. in London, where she lived all her life. She began to write poetry in early girlhood, some of her earliest verse appearing in 1850 in the Germ, the magazine of the pre-Raphaelites, of which her brother was one of the founders. Her subsequent publications were Goblin Market and other Poems (1862), The Prince’s Progress (1866), A Pageant and other Poems (1881), and Verses (1893). New Poems (1896) appeared after her death. Sing-Song was a book of verses for children. Her life was a very retired one, passed largely in attending on her mother, who lived until 1886, and in religious duties. She twice rejected proposals of marriage. Her poetry is characterised by imaginative power, exquisite expression, and simplicity and depth of thought. She rarely imitated any forerunner, and drew her inspiration from her own experiences of thought and feeling. Many of her poems are definitely religious in form; more are deeply imbued with religious feeling and motive. In addition to her poems she wrote Commonplace and other Stories, and The Face of the Deep, a striking and suggestive commentary on the Apocalypse.