ROSSETTI, Christina Georgina (1830-1894), was born in London and educated by her father Gabriele in Greek, Italian, and classical literature (Marsh, 37-44).  Her mother was a staunchly evangelical Anglican; the family drifted in the 1840’s toward Tractarianist thinking (Everett).  Christina wrote about questions of faith until her death (DNB, 283).  Her early verses are noted for their Pre-Raphaelite decorative detail, while her later poems turn increasingly to the themes of childhood, faith and death (Fredeman, 176).  Throughout her life, Christina frequently re-read from the Bible and Alban Butler’s The Lives of the Saints (1760), as indicated in Time Flies (1885).
	Rossetti was raised in a poetical family, and her first attempts at writing poetry were influenced by the work of Charles Robert Maturin, whose sensationalist novels The Wild Irish Boy (1818) and Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) introduced the theme of doomed love to her writing (Marsh, 44).  Felicia Hemans’ and George Herbert’s poetry, anthologized in The Sacred Harp (1844), also influenced Christina to begin writing on religious subjects (Bod. Lib. 1362).  Her poem On the Convent Threshold (1858) is a thinly-disguised retelling of Alexander Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard, wherein she combines the two themes, saying that she “cannot bear to be silent on. . . Christianity” (W. Rossetti [4 Apr. 1862]).  
	In 1859, Christina read Emma Shepherd’s An Outstretched Hand to the Fallen (1857), which inspired her to volunteer at the Saint Mary Magdalene Penitentiary at Highgate Prison, “supervising young prostitutes who wished to relinquish a life of shame” (Marsh, 218-219). From this work came Rossetti’s masterpiece, “Goblin Market” (1862), which also had roots in the fairy tale Sagen und Märchen and Thomas Keightley’s Fairy Mythology (1860) (Marsh, 229-230).  
	“[T]he wonderful poet” Jean Ingelow’s Poems (1863) opened to Rossetti the genre of children’s verses, which led, eventually, to Sing-Song (1872)(Marsh, 303).  In her later years, she read--as proofreader--the works of her brother Dante Gabriel (q.v.), as well as editions of Percy Shelley (q.v.) and Lord George Byron (q.v.) being prepared by her brother William (Marsh, 378).  She also notes using Charlotte Young’s article in Macmillan’s  (Jul. 1869, 233-4) as a reading list for subjects for her own children’s verses (Marsh, 378).
Archives.
Correspondence of Frederick George Stephens, Bodleian Lib. (MSS. Don. e.78, d. 116-119, e. 57-87).
Harrison, Antony H., The Collected Letters of Christina Rossetti, 2 vols. (Richmond: UP of Virginia, 1995).
Printed Sources.
Everett, Glenn, “The Life of Christina Rossetti,” The Victorian Web (http://www. stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/victorian/crossetti/ rossettibio.html).
Garnett, Richard, “Rossetti, Christina Georgina,” The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900, Ed. Sidney Lee, 23 vols. (London: Smith, Elder, 1901), Vol. 17, 283-284.
Marsh, Jan, Christina Rossetti: A Writer’s Life (New York: Viking, 1994).
Fredeman, William E., Pre-Raphaelitism: A Bibliocritical Study (Cambridge, Harvard UP, 1965).
Rossetti, Christina, Time Flies: A Reading Diary (London: Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, 1885).
Rossetti, William Michael, ed.  The Family Letters of Christina Georgina Rossetti, with some Supplementary Letters and Appendices (London: Brown, Langham, 1908).
Thomas J. Tobin
Duquesne University