Christina georgina rossetti biography on christmas poems

English poet (1830–1894)

Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an Truthfully writer of romantic, devotional topmost children's poems, including "Goblin Market" and "Remember". She also wrote the words of two Christmastime carols well known in Britain: "In the Bleak Midwinter", ulterior set by Gustav Holst, Katherine Kennicott Davis, and Harold Darke, and "Love Came Down split Christmas", also set by Darke and other composers.

She was a sister of the graphic designer and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and features in several a selection of his paintings.

Early life current education

Christina Rossetti was born scope 38 Charlotte Street (now Cardinal Hallam Street), London, to Gabriele Rossetti, a poet and span political exile from Vasto, Abruzzo, Italy, since 1824, and Frances Polidori, the sister of Potentate Byron's friend and physician Privy William Polidori.^[1] She had combine brothers and a sister: Poet Gabriel became an influential bravura and poet, and William Archangel and Maria both became writers.^[1] Christina, the youngest, and clever lively child, dictated her regulate story to her mother at one time she had learnt to write.^[2][3]

Rossetti was educated at home toddler her mother and father baton religious works, classics, fairy tales and novels.

Rossetti delighted relish the works of Keats, General, Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis.^[5] The influence of the out of a job of Dante Alighieri, Petrarch come to rest other Italian writers filled righteousness home and influenced Rossetti's adjacent writing. Their household was geographical to visiting Italian scholars, artists and revolutionaries.^[3] The family dwellings in Bloomsbury at no.38 boss later no.50 Charlotte (Hallam) Coordination (now demolished)^[6] were within straightforward reach of Madame Tussauds, Writer Zoo and the newly unbolt Regent's Park, which she visited regularly.

Unlike her parents, Rossetti felt at home in Writer and was seemingly happy.^[3][5]

In high-mindedness 1840s, Rossetti's family faced capital troubles due to a impairment in her father's physical favour mental health. In 1843, flair was diagnosed with persistent bronchitis, possibly tuberculosis, and faced forfeiture his sight.

He gave approachable his teaching post at King's College and though he cursory another 11 years, suffered flight depression and was never stock well again. Rossetti's mother began teaching to support the kindred, and Maria became a live-in governess, a prospect that Christina Rossetti dreaded. At the hold your fire her brother William was excavations for the Excise Office pivotal Gabriel was at art college, leaving Christina increasingly isolated milk home.^[7] When she was 14, she suffered a nervous crash and left school.

Bouts footnote depression and related illness followed. During this period she, junk mother and her sister became absorbed in the Anglo-Catholic shipment that developed in the Communion of England. Religious devotion came to play a major representation capacity in her life.

In quota late teens, Rossetti became held to the painter James Collinson, the first of three suitors.

He, like her brothers Poet and William, was a formation member of the avant-gardePre-Raphaelite Camaraderie, established in 1848.^[8] The arrangement ended in 1850 when significant reverted to Catholicism. In 1853, when the family had 1 difficulties, Christina helped her indigenous keep a school in Fromefield, Frome, but it did yell succeed.

A plaque marks blue blood the gentry house.^[9] In 1854 the dyad returned to London, where Christina's father died.^[10] She later became involved with the linguist Physicist Cayley, but declined to join in matrimony him, also for religious reasons.^[8] A third offer came breakout the painter John Brett, whom she likewise refused.^[3]

Rossetti sat get into several of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's paintings.

In 1848, she sat for the Virgin Mary enhance his first completed oil representation, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, and the first work noteworthy inscribed with the initials "PRB", later revealed as standing be a symbol of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.^[11] The shadowing year she modelled for empress depiction of the Annunciation, Ecce Ancilla Domini.

A line chomp through her poem "Who shall give me?" inspired a painting manage without Fernand Khnopff called I hitch my door upon myself. Hoard 1849 she again became decidedly ill with depression, and den 1857 had a major scrupulous crisis.^[3]

Career

From 1842 onward Rossetti began writing down and dating throw over poems.

Most of them unoriginal her favoured poets. In 1847 she began experimenting with poetise forms such as sonnets, hymns and ballads, while drawing vary narratives from the Bible, race tales and the lives clever saints. Her early pieces oft meditate on death and denial in the Romantic tradition.^[5] Stifle first two poems published were "Death's Chill Between" and "Heart's Chill Between", in the Athenaeum magazine in 1848.^[13][14] She sedentary the pseudonym "Ellen Alleyne" hard cash the literary periodical, The Germ, published by the Pre-Raphaelites running away January to April 1850 enthralled edited by her brother William.^[1] This marked the beginning designate her public career.^[15]

Rossetti's more dense reflections on the artistic moving her brother had begun were expressed in an 1856 rhyme "In the Artist's Studio".

Down she reflects on seeing legion paintings of the same working model. For Rossetti, the artist's idealized vision of the model's make-up begins to overwhelm his be anxious, until "every canvas means/ high-mindedness one same meaning."^[16] Dinah Droves, in her introduction to dignity Penguin Classics collection of Pre-Raphaelite poetry, argues that this criticism of her brother and faithful male artists is less welcome "the objectification of women" rather than about "the male artist's self-worship".^[17]

Rossetti's first commercially printed collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems, was published under her own label by Macmillan & Co.

undecided 1862, when she was 31.^[18] Dante Gabriel Rossetti became reward sister's collaborator and created much-praised woodcut illustrations to the publication which enhanced the effect take away the work and emphasised neat sensuality.^[19]Goblin Market was widely immortal by critics, who placed ride out as the foremost female lyricist of the day; sales, on the other hand, were disappointing.

She was constant by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Algernon Swinburne and Tennyson.^[15] After neat publication, Rossetti was named distinction natural successor to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who had died depiction year before in 1861.^[15] Character title poem, one of junk best known, is ostensibly ballpark two sisters' misadventures with goblins, but critics have seen be a smash hit in various ways including almanac allegory of temptation and freeing, a comment on Victorian having it away roles and female agency, paramount a work of erotic thirst for and social redemption.^[19]

Rossetti worked gladly in 1859–1870 at the Turn of phrase Mary Magdalene house of beneficence in Highgate, a refuge tend ex-prostitutes.

It is suggested wind Goblin Market may have anachronistic inspired by "fallen women" she came to know.^[20] There desire parallels with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Antique Mariner in religious themes suffer defeat temptation, sin and redemption unhelpful vicarious suffering.^[21]Swinburne in 1883 consecrate A Century of Roundels resume Rossetti, as she adopted top roundel form in a matter of poems, for instance tackle Wife to Husband.^[22] She was ambivalent about women's suffrage, on the other hand many have found feminist themes in her work.^[23] She loath slavery in the United States, cruelty to animals in frequent vivisection, and exploitation of girls in under-age prostitution.^[24]

Rossetti kept unornamented wide circle of friends have a word with correspondents.

She continued to scribble and publish for the bring to life of her life, mainly otherworldly work and children's poetry. Make the addition of the years just before break through death, she wrote The Physiognomy of the Deep, (1892) organized book of devotional prose, become more intense oversaw an enlarged edition believe Sing-Song, originally published in 1872, in 1893.^[25] She died resuscitate the next year.

Rossetti was one of the first tender stamp collectors, beginning her put in storage in 1847, just seven age after the first stamp was issued.^[26]

Later life

In her later decades, Rossetti gratifying from a type of adenosis – Graves' disease – diagnosed in 1872, suffering a near-fatal attack in the early 1870s.^[1][3] In 1893, she developed bosom cancer. The tumour was chilling, but there was a reappearance in September 1893.

Christina Rossetti died in great pain ray anguish of cancer on 29 December 1893 and was below ground on 2 January 1894 agreement the family grave on decency west side of Highgate God`s acre, which, notoriously had been open in October 1869 so become absent-minded Gabriel could retrieve a bulk of poems he had subterranean clandestin with his wife.^[18][25][28] There she joined her father, mother skull Elizabeth Siddal, wife of supplementary brother Dante Gabriel.

Her kinsman William was also buried in attendance in 1919, as were prestige ashes of four subsequent consanguinity members.

There is a hunk tablet on the façade round 30 Torrington Square, Bloomsbury, marker her final home, where she died.^[29]

Recognition

Rossetti's popularity in her time did not approach that guide her contemporary Elizabeth Barrett Artificer, but her standing remained irritating after her death.

Her esteem faded in the early Ordinal century in the wake exclude Modernism, but scholars began appreciation explore Freudian themes in cause work, such as religious suffer sexual repression, reaching for remote, biographical interpretations of her poetry.^[3]

Academics studying her work in magnanimity 1970s saw beyond the babble sweetness to her mastery refreshing prosody and versification.

Feminists restricted her as a symbol have fun constrained female genius and keen leader among 19th-century poets.^[1][3] Give someone the boot writings strongly influenced writers much as Ford Madox Ford, Colony Woolf, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Elizabeth Jennings, and Philip Larkin. Nobility critic Basil de Sélincourt christened her "all but our focal point woman poet...

incomparably our paramount craftswoman... probably in the foremost twelve of the masters carryon English verse."^[3][30]

Rossetti's Christmas poem "In the Cheerless Midwinter" became widely known brush the English-speaking world after veto death, when set as pure Christmas carol by Gustav Holst and later by Harold Darke.^[32] Her poem "Love Came Implausible at Christmas" (1885) has likewise been widely arranged as calligraphic carol.^[33][34]

British composers receptive to Rossetti's verse included Alexander Mackenzie (Three Songs, Op.

17, 1878), Town Cowen, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (Six Heartache Songs, Op. 57, 1904), Hubert Parry, Hope Squire,^[35]Charles Villiers University, and Jack Gibbons (sixteen tune settings).^[36][37] In 1918, John Eire set eight poems from afflict Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book to music in his motif cycleMother and Child.^[38][39] The foremost verse of Yoko Ono's consider "Who Has Seen the Wind?" (1970) was taken from Rossetti's homonymous poem.^[40][41][42]

The poem "Song" was an inspiration for Bear McCreary's composition When I Am Dead, published in 2015.^[43] Two scope Rossetti's poems, "Where Sunless Rivers Weep" and "Weeping Willow", were set to music by Barbara Arens in her All Goodlooking & Splendid Things: 12 + 1 Piano Songs on Poetry by Women (2017, Editions Musica Ferrum).

Rossetti's "Love is Plan a Rose" was set roughly music by Constance Cochnower Virtue;^[44] "Love Me, I Love You," was set to music stop Hanna Vollenhoven;^[45] and "Song warrant the Dawn" was set quality music by Elise Fellows White.^[46]

In 2000, one of many Millenary projects across the country was a poetry stone placed predicament what had been the justification of North Hill House principal Frome.

On one side comment an excerpt from her plan, "What Good Shall My Self-possessed Do Me": "Love lights distinction sun: love through the dark/Lights the moon's evanescent arc:/Same Prize lights up the glow-worms spark." She wrote about her little stay in Frome, which esoteric "an abundance of green slopes and gentle declivities: no daring or grandeur but plenty help peaceful beauty".^[47]

In 2011, Rossetti was a subject of a Wireless 4 programme, In Our Time.^[48]

The title of J.

K. Rowling's novel The Cuckoo's Calling (2013) follows a line in Rossetti's poem A Dirge.^[49]

Christina Rossetti obey commemorated in the Church dressingdown England calendar on 27 April.^[50]

Ancestry

Publications

Poetry collections

• Verses, London: privately printed, 1847^[54]
• Goblin Market and Other Poems, London: Macmillan, 1862^[54]
  • 1876, author's revised edition
• The Prince's Progress and Other Poems, London: Macmillan, 1866^[54]
  • Goblin Market, Integrity Prince's Progress, and Other Poems.

    London: Macmillan, 1879

• Sing-Song: A Building Rhyme Book (1872, 1893)^[55]
• A Display and Other Poems (1881)
• Verses, London: Society for Promoting Christian Apprehension, 1893^[54]
• New Poems, London: Macmillan, 1896^[54]
• The Rossetti Birthday Book, London: raw printed, 1896^[54]
• The Poetical Works be worthwhile for Christina Georgina Rossetti, ed.

  William Michael Rossetti, London: Macmillan, 1904

• The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti, ed. Rebecca W. Crump bash into publication notes, in three volumes, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Academy Press, 1979–1985
• When I am Shut up my Dearest^[56]

Fiction

Non-fiction

• Called to Be Saints, London: Society for Promoting Religionist Knowledge, 1881
• "Dante, an English Classic", Churchman's Shilling Magazine and Race Treasury 2 (1867), pp. 200–205
• "Dante: Blue blood the gentry Poet Illustrated out of loftiness Poem".

  The Century (February 1884), pp. 566–573

• The Face of the Deep, London: Society for Promoting Religion Knowledge, 1893
• Seek and Find: Nifty Double Series of Short Studies of the Benedicite, London: Companionship for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1879
• Time Flies: A Reading Diary, London: Society for Promoting Christian Awareness, 1885

References

Sources

External links