Rossetti+Bio

Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)

Rossetti was born in London on December 5, 1830. She had two brothers and a sister; all of them were also successful writers and poets.Her brother Dante Rossetti was also a painter and some of his most famous paintings were of her. When she was young, her father Gabriele Rossetti became really sick and her family began to suffer from financial issues. She and her mother Frances Polidorithen started a day school in attempt to support the family. This stress caused her to leave school at fourteen. In her late teens she was engaged to a painter named James Collinson. However, the engagement was canceled when he reverted to his original religion. She was also proposed to by Charles Gayley but she declined due to differences in religion. When she was seven she started writing and by eighteen she had published her first poem, featured in the Atheneaum. She mostly wrote children's poetry and poems about love and nature but had also been known to write about women's suffrage, her opposition to war, slavery, cruelty to animals (specifically animal experimentation), under-age prostitution, and military agression. She was fluent in English and Italian and could read French, German, and Latin. Other Poems of Christina Rossetti

(back to poem)