{\b Christina Georgina Rossetti}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 5 December 1830

{\b Date of Death}.: 29 December 1894

{\b Works}.

 English poet. Her collections of verse include Goblin Market and Other Poems 
(1862), The Prince's Progress and Other Poems (1866) and A Pageant and Other 
Poems (1881), and 'A Birthday', 'Remember', 'Uphill' and the Christmas carol 
'In the Bleak Mid-Winter'. She also wrote Sing-song, a Nursery Rhyme Book 
(1862) for children, which was illustrated by Arthur Hughes. Rossetti's main 
concern was her religious poetry, and she had great lyrical gifts. She was 
associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, which included her brothers D.G. 
and W.M. Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. 

{\b Featured Works}.

'Remember', 'Echo', 'When I Am Dead, My Dearest', 'Uphill', 'A Birthday', 
'Mirage', 'Endure Hardness', "Who Hath Despised the Day of Small Things?", 
'Goblin Market', 'The Skylark', 'The Bourne', 'Somewhere or Other', 'A 
Christmas Carol', "Lord Jesus, Who Would Think That I Am Thine?", 'Spring 
Quiet', 'One Sea-Side Grave', 'May', 'Winter: My Secret', 'Promises Like 
Pie-Crust', "Summer is Ended", 'A Frog's Fate'.

{\b General Comment}.

Christina was the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and like him she showed 
promise as a poet while still very young. She was educated at home and 
encouraged to write by her family; her teenage poems were printed by her 
grandfather on his own press.

She was a devout Anglican, and refused two suitors on religious grounds: the 
painter James Collinson because he became a Roman Catholic; and Charles Bagot 
Cayley, because he was an atheist. Perhaps as a result of this self-denial, a 
recurrent theme in her poetry is the rejection of earthly passion in favour of 
spiritual devotion. Even those poems with a strong element of fantasy in them, 
such as 'Goblin Market' or 'The Prince's Progress' are often written with a 
clear moral purpose in mind. 

Rossetti's health was always poor, and illness had rendered her an invalid by 
the time she was fifty. She continued to write however, producing Time Flies: 
A Reading Diary (1885), which contained poems and thoughts for each day, and 
The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary on the Apocalypse (1892). After 
her death her brother W.M. Rossetti brought out an edition of her later 
poetry, New Poems, in 1896, and edited her Collected Poems (1904).

Christina Rossetti is widely regarded as the greatest female poet in English 
up to her own time. She was considered for the position of Poet Laureate, 
before her final illness made the appointment impossible.