Her Life and Literary Activities :
Christina Rossetti definitely occupies a distinctive place in Victorian poetry . She was not , like her famous brother D.G. Rossetti , an English person in birth and blood . Of course , she was born in London on December 5 , 1830. She was the youngest of her parents ' four children .
Her father was an Italian who had to leave his country for his political activity . He was somehow forced to settle in London and at last , became a professor of Italian Language and Literature at King's College , London . Her brother , Dante Gabriel Rossetti , was a famous poet of the Victorian period . She had another brother , William Michael Rossetti , who was also quite remarkable as a man of letters of the time . Both of her brothers were at their best as poets but Christina , too , was no less for her poetic talent . She proved , too , the poetess of several well known poems . Infact , the Rossetti family lived in a cosmopolitan atmosphere , full of culture and intellectualism . There was a perfect combination of English and Italian in them .
Christina's first volume of poetry was published when she was herdhy seventeen . Her brothers D.G. Rossetti form the Pre - Raphaetite Brotherhood with the help of likeminded persons . C.G. Rossetti was also interested in the group and contributed poems and articles to the Pre - Raphaelite journal , The Germ . The Pre - Raphaelites were both the painters and the poets and their poetry had much of painting , just as their painting was fed by poetry .
C.G. Rossetti had contacts with some of the persons belonging to the Pre - Raphaelite group . One of them was a poet - painter James Collinson with thom she grew intimate . They were even engaged in 1848 , but Tames embraced the Roman catholic religion which Christina could not accept . Their engagement naturally got broken . Christina passed a lonely gloomy life in religious meditation and nursing her sick father . Of course , her health was not well and her observations of the hard practices of the Anglican religion worsened it . She actually grew old and sick and finally died of cancer in 1894 .
Miss Rossetti's poetic career , as noted earlier , started quite early in her life . It started , when she was hardly eleven years old . She wrote and circulated her verse prevately therefrom . The Germ , published by her brothers and their associates , which happened to be the mouthpiece of the Pre - Raphaelite movement , contained a number of her writings , published , time to time .
In fact , that mouthpiece of the pre - Raphaelite movement proved to initiate and inspire Christina's poetical journey , Goblin Market and other Poems . The ' Goblin Market ' proved to be a popular work of the time and was commended widely and highly in the learned circle . The collection , too , came to be recognized as the representative poetical expression of the pre - Raphaelite movement . Miss Rossetti's aesthetic religiosity is found well borne out here .
Goblin Market and other Poems was followed by Rossetti's next other volumes The Prince's Progress and Other Poems , A Pageant and Other Poems , Three Stages , Enrica , In the Bleak Midwinter , and so on . Some of Christina's Christian poetry include ' Noble Sisters ' , ' Maud Claire ' and ' The Convent Threshold ' . Her holy approach and deep faith in divine mercy are clearly expressed in poems such as ' Dost Thou Not Care ? ' , ' Lord What I Have To Offer ? ' , ' The Fields are white ' and ' What Good Shall My Life Do Me ? '
Christina's poetry are marked with her arduous faith , noble love and interest in ballad meter and the touches of mystery and magic . Finally , her poems are absolutely feminine in nature . Indeed , she stands for feminine sisterhood and feminine suzereignty or feminine conviction in life and sisterhood .
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