Christina Georgina Rossetti

1830-1894. Anglican poetess. Daughter of a Dante scholar and sister of two Pre- Raphaelites, she was educated at home and later helped her mother run a school. A High Anglican, she rejected two suitors on religious grounds. These disappointments and ill-health, which led to a secluded life, intensified her religious temperament. She published several books in prose for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Her books of verse, beginning with Goblin Market, and Other Poems (1862) and ending with New Poems (1896), are rich in devotional feeling. Her sonnet sequences, Monna Innominata and Later Life, exalt divine over human love. Some of her poems are sung as hymns, e.g., “In the bleak midwinter”; “Love came down at Christmas”; and “None other Lamb, none other Name.”