Poets

Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English writer of romantic, devotional and children's poems, including "Goblin Market" and "Remember".

Christina Rossetti was born on 5 December 1830 in London. In the 1840s, Rossetti's family faced financial troubles due to a deterioration in her father's physical and mental health. At the time, her brother William was working for the Excise Office and Gabriel was at art school, leaving Christina increasingly isolated at home.

When she was 14, she suffered a nervous breakdown and left school. Bouts of depression and related illness followed. During this period she, her mother and her sister became absorbed in the Anglo-Catholic movement that developed in the Church of England. Religious devotion came to play a major role in her life.

Rossetti started writing poems when she was 12, and five years later in 1947, she started to experiment with different styles and verse forms. Her work was inspired by the Bible and folklore the most, and she mostly wrote romantic and devotional poems.

When she was in the last years of her teens, she was engaged to the painter James Collinson. In 1850 however, the engagement ended because James reverted to Catholicism.

Early Life and Education

Christina Rossetti was born at 38 Charlotte Street (now 105 Hallam Street), London to Gabriele Rossetti, a poet and a political exile from Vasto, Abruzzo, and Frances Polidori, the sister of