Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an English writer of romantic, devotional and children's poems, including "

Goblin Market ''Goblin Market'' is an 1862 Narrative poetry, narrative poem by Christina Rossetti. It tells the story of sisters Laura and Lizzie, who are tempted with fruit by goblin merchants. In a letter to her publisher, Rossetti claimed that the poem, w ...

" and "Remember". She also wrote the words of two Christmas carols well known in Britain: " In the Bleak Midwinter", later set by

Gustav Holst Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst; 21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934) was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite ''The Planets'', he composed many other works across a range ...

, Katherine Kennicott Davis, and

Harold Darke Harold Edwin Darke (29 October 1888 – 28 November 1976) was an English composer and organist. He is particularly known for his choral compositions, which are an established part of the repertoire of Anglican church music. Darke had a fifty-ye ...

, and "

Love Came Down at Christmas "Love Came Down at Christmas" is a Christmas poem by Christina Rossetti. It was first published without a title in ''Time Flies: A Reading Diary'' in 1885. It was later included in the collection ''Verses'' in 1893 under the title "Christmastide ...

", also set by Darke and other composers. She was a sister of the artist and poet

Dante Gabriel Rossetti Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti ( ; ), was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator, and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brother ...

and features in several of his paintings.

Early life and education

Christina Rossetti was born at 38 Charlotte Street (now 110 Hallam Street), London, to Gabriele Rossetti, a poet and a political exile from

Vasto Vasto ( Abruzzese: '; , ) is a ''comune'' on the Adriatic coast of the Province of Chieti, in southern Abruzzo, Italy. During the Middle Ages it was called ''Guastaymonis'', '' Vasto d'Aimone'' or ''Waste d'Aimone''. Fascist Italy called the city ...

, Abruzzo, Italy, since 1824, and Frances Polidori, the sister of

Lord Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824) was an English poet. He is one of the major figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as being among the greatest poets of the United Kingdom. Among his best-kno ...

's friend and physician John William Polidori. She had two brothers and a sister: Dante Gabriel became an influential artist and poet, and William Michael and Maria both became writers. Christina, the youngest, and a lively child, dictated her first story to her mother before she had learnt to write. Rossetti was educated at home by her mother and father through religious works, classics, fairy tales and novels. Rossetti delighted in the works of Keats, Scott, Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis. The influence of the work of

Dante Alighieri Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...

Petrarch Francis Petrarch (; 20 July 1304 – 19 July 1374; ; modern ), born Francesco di Petracco, was a scholar from Arezzo and poet of the early Italian Renaissance, as well as one of the earliest Renaissance humanism, humanists. Petrarch's redis ...

and other Italian writers filled the home and influenced Rossetti's later writing. Their household was open to visiting Italian scholars, artists and revolutionaries. The family homes in

Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London, part of the London Borough of Camden in England. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural institution, cultural, intellectual, and educational ...

at no. 38 and later no. 50 Charlotte (Hallam) Street (now demolished) were within easy reach of Madame Tussauds, London Zoo and the newly opened

Regent's Park Regent's Park (officially The Regent's Park) is one of the Royal Parks of London. It occupies in north-west Inner London, administratively split between the City of Westminster and the London Borough of Camden, Borough of Camden (and historical ...

, which she visited regularly. Unlike her parents, Rossetti felt at home in London and was seemingly happy.Packer, Lona Mosk (1963) ''Christina Rossetti'' University of California Press, pp. 13–17. Christina Rossetti 2

In the 1840s, Rossetti's family faced financial troubles due to a deterioration in her father's physical and mental health. In 1843, he was diagnosed with persistent

bronchitis Bronchitis is inflammation of the bronchi (large and medium-sized airways) in the lungs that causes coughing. Bronchitis usually begins as an infection in the nose, ears, throat, or sinuses. The infection then makes its way down to the bronchi. ...

, possibly

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...

, and faced losing his sight. He gave up his teaching post at King's College and though he lived another 11 years, suffered from depression and was never physically well again. Rossetti's mother began teaching to support the family, and Maria became a live-in governess, a prospect that Christina Rossetti dreaded. At the time her brother William was working for the Excise Office and Gabriel was at art school, leaving Christina increasingly isolated at home.Packer, Lona Mosk (1963) ''Christina Rossetti'' University of California Press, p. 20. 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 Anglo-Catholicism comprises beliefs and practices that emphasise the Catholicism, Catholic heritage (especially pre-English Reformation, Reformation roots) and identity of the Church of England and various churches within Anglicanism. Anglo-Ca ...

movement that developed in the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...

. Religious devotion came to play a major role in her life. In her late teens, Rossetti became engaged to the painter

James Collinson James Collinson (9 May 1825 – 1881) was a Victorian painter who was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood from 1848 to 1850. Collinson was known for the paintings,''The Renunciation of St Elizabeth of Hungary'', ''To Let'' and ''For S ...

, the first of three suitors. He, like her brothers Dante and William, was a founding member of the

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), later known as the Pre-Raphaelites, was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossett ...

, established in 1848.Packer, Lona Mosk (1963) ''Christina Rossetti'' University of California Press, p. 29. The engagement ended in 1850 when he reverted to

Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

. In 1853, when the family had financial difficulties, Christina helped her mother keep a school in Fromefield, Frome, but it did not succeed. A plaque marks the house. In 1854 the pair returned to London, where Christina's father died. She later became involved with the linguist Charles Cayley, but declined to marry him, also for religious reasons. A third offer came from the painter John Brett, whom she likewise refused. Rossetti sat for several of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's paintings. In 1848, she sat for the

Virgin Mary Mary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is an important figure of Christianity, venerated under titles of Mary, mother of Jesus, various titles such as Perpetual virginity ...

in his first completed oil painting, '' The Girlhood of Mary Virgin'', and the first work he inscribed with the initials "PRB", later revealed as standing for the

. The following year she modelled for his depiction of the

Annunciation The Annunciation (; ; also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Annunciation of Our Lady, or the Annunciation of the Lord; ) is, according to the Gospel of Luke, the announcement made by the archangel Gabriel to Ma ...

, '' Ecce Ancilla Domini''. A line from her poem "Who shall deliver me?" inspired a painting by Fernand Khnopff called ''I lock my door upon myself''. In 1849 she again became seriously ill with depression, and around 1857 had a major religious crisis.

Career

From 1842 onward Rossetti began writing down and dating her poems. Most of them imitated her favoured poets. In 1847 she began experimenting with verse forms such as

sonnet A sonnet is a fixed poetic form with a structure traditionally consisting of fourteen lines adhering to a set Rhyme scheme, rhyming scheme. The term derives from the Italian word ''sonetto'' (, from the Latin word ''sonus'', ). Originating in ...

s, hymns and

ballad A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Great Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Eur ...

s, while drawing on narratives from the Bible, folk tales and the lives of saints. Her early pieces often meditate on death and loss in the Romantic tradition. Her first two poems published were "Death's Chill Between" and "Heart's Chill Between", in the '' Athenaeum'' magazine in 1848."Christina Rossetti (1830–1894)," eNotes.com, Web, 19 May 2011. She used the pseudonym "Ellen Alleyne" in the literary periodical, '' The Germ'', published by the Pre-Raphaelites from January to April 1850 and edited by her brother William. This marked the beginning of her public career.''The Cambridge Companion to English Poets'' (2011), Claude Rawson, Cambridge University Press, pp. 424–429. Rossetti's more critical reflections on the artistic movement her brother had begun were expressed in an 1856 poem "In the Artist's Studio". Here she reflects on seeing multiple paintings of the same model. For Rossetti, the artist's idealised vision of the model's character begins to overwhelm his work, until "every canvas means/ the one same meaning." Dinah Roe, in her introduction to the Penguin Classics collection of Pre-Raphaelite poetry, argues that this critique of her brother and similar male artists is less about "the objectification of women" than about "the male artist's self-worship". Rossetti's first commercially printed collection, '' Goblin Market and Other Poems'', was published under her own name by Macmillan & Co. in 1862, when she was 31. Dante Gabriel Rossetti became his sister's collaborator and created much-praised woodcut illustrations to the book which enhanced the effect of the work and emphasised its sensuality. ''Goblin Market'' was widely praised by critics, who placed her as the foremost female poet of the day; sales, however, were disappointing. She was lauded by

Gerard Manley Hopkins Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Society of Jesus, Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame places him among the leading English poets. His Prosody (linguistics), prosody – notably his concept of sprung ...

, Algernon Swinburne and

Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (; 6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's ...

. After its publication, Rossetti was named the natural successor to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who had died the year before in 1861. The title poem, one of her best known, is ostensibly about two sisters' misadventures with goblins, but critics have seen it in various ways including an allegory of temptation and salvation, a comment on Victorian gender roles and female agency, and a work of erotic desire and social redemption. Rossetti worked voluntarily in 1859–1870 at the St Mary Magdalene house of charity in

Highgate Highgate is a suburban area of N postcode area, north London in the London Borough of Camden, London Boroughs of Camden, London Borough of Islington, Islington and London Borough of Haringey, Haringey. The area is at the north-eastern corner ...

, a refuge for ex-prostitutes. It is suggested that ''Goblin Market'' was inspired by "fallen women" she came to know.Lona Mosk Packer, (1963), ''Christina Rossetti'', University of California Press, p. 155. There are parallels with

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( ; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets with his friend William Wordsworth ...

's ''

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' (originally ''The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere''), written by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1797–98 and published in 1798 in the first edition of '' Lyrical Ballads'', is a poem that recounts th ...

'' in religious themes of temptation, sin and redemption by vicarious suffering.

Swinburne Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist and critic. He wrote many plays – all tragedies – and collections of poetry such as '' Poems and Ballads'', and contributed to the Eleve ...

in 1883 dedicated ''A Century of Roundels'' to Rossetti, as she adopted his roundel form in a number of poems, for instance in ''Wife to Husband''. She was ambivalent about

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...

, but many have found

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

themes in her work. She opposed

slavery in the United States The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of List of ethnic groups of Africa, Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865 ...

cruelty to animals Cruelty to animals, also called animal abuse, animal neglect or animal cruelty, is the infliction of suffering or Injury, harm by humans upon animals, either by omission (neglect) or by commission. More narrowly, it can be the causing of harm ...

in prevalent

vivisection Vivisection () is surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system, to view living internal structure. The word is, more broadly, used as a pejorative catch-all term for Animal test ...

, and exploitation of girls in under-age prostitution. Rossetti kept a wide circle of friends and correspondents. She continued to write and publish for the rest of her life, mainly devotional work and children's poetry. In the years just before her death, she wrote ''The Face of the Deep'', (1892) a book of devotional prose, and oversaw an enlarged edition of ''Sing-Song'', originally published in 1872, in 1893.Antony H. Harrison (2004), ''The Letters of Christina Rossetti Volume 4, 1887–1894'', University of Virginia Press, . She died late the next year. Grave of Christina Rossetti

Rossetti was one of the first female stamp collectors, beginning her collection in 1847, just seven years after the first stamp was issued.

Later life

In her later decades, Rossetti suffered from a type of

hyperthyroidism Hyperthyroidism is a endocrine disease in which the thyroid gland produces excessive amounts of thyroid hormones. Thyrotoxicosis is a condition that occurs due to elevated levels of thyroid hormones of any cause and therefore includes hyperth ...

–

Graves' disease Graves' disease, also known as toxic diffuse goiter or Basedow's disease, is an autoimmune disease that affects the thyroid. It frequently results in and is the most common cause of hyperthyroidism. It also often results in an enlarged thyro ...

– diagnosed in 1872, suffering a near-fatal attack in the early 1870s. In 1893, she developed

breast cancer Breast cancer is a cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a Breast lump, lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, Milk-rejection sign, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipp ...

. The tumour was removed, but there was a recurrence in September 1893. Christina Rossetti died of cancer on 29 December 1894 and was buried on 2 January 1895 in the family grave on the west side of

Highgate Cemetery Highgate Cemetery is a place of burial in North London, England, designed by architect Stephen Geary. There are approximately 170,000 people buried in around 53,000 graves across the West and East sides. Highgate Cemetery is notable both for so ...

, which, notoriously had been opened in October 1869 so that Gabriel could retrieve a volume of poems he had buried with his wife. There she joined her father, mother and Elizabeth Siddal, wife of her brother Dante Gabriel. Her brother William was also buried there in 1919, as were the ashes of four subsequent family members. There is a stone tablet on the façade of 30 Torrington Square,

, marking her final home, where she died.

Recognition

Rossetti's popularity in her lifetime did not approach that of her contemporary Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but her standing remained strong after her death. Her popularity faded in the early 20th century in the wake of

Modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

, but scholars began to explore Freudian themes in her work, such as religious and sexual repression, reaching for personal, biographical interpretations of her poetry. Academics studying her work in the 1970s saw beyond the lyrical sweetness to her mastery of prosody and versification. Feminists held her as a symbol of constrained female genius and a leader among 19th-century poets. Her writings strongly influenced writers such as

Ford Madox Ford Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer ( ); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals ''The English Review'' and ''The Transatlantic Review (1924), The Transatlant ...

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...

, Elizabeth Jennings, and Philip Larkin. The critic Basil de Sélincourt called her "all but our greatest woman poet... incomparably our greatest craftswoman... probably in the first twelve of the masters of English verse." Rossetti's Christmas poem " In the Bleak Midwinter" became widely known in the English-speaking world after her death, when set as a Christmas carol by

and later by

. Her poem "

" (1885) has also been widely arranged as a carol. British composers receptive to Rossetti's verse included Alexander Mackenzie (''Three Songs'', Op. 17, 1878), Frederick Cowen, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (''Six Sorrow Songs'', Op. 57, 1904),

Hubert Parry Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet (27 February 1848 – 7 October 1918), was an English composer, teacher and historian of music. Born in Richmond Hill, Bournemouth, Parry's first major works appeared in 1880. As a composer he is ...

, Hope Squire, Charles Villiers Stanford, and Jack Gibbons (sixteen song settings). In 1918, John Ireland set eight poems from her ''Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book'' to music in his

song cycle A song cycle () is a group, or cycle (music), cycle, of individually complete Art song, songs designed to be performed in sequence, as a unit.Susan Youens, ''Grove online'' The songs are either for solo voice or an ensemble, or rarely a combinat ...

Mother and Child A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the case of gestat ...

''. The first verse of

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono (, usually spelled in katakana as ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York ...

's song " Who Has Seen the Wind?" (1970) was taken from Rossetti's homonymous poem. The poem "Song" was an inspiration for

Bear McCreary Bear McCreary (born February 17, 1979) is an American composer of film, television, and video game scores. His work includes the scores of the television series '' Battlestar Galactica'' (2004), '' Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'', '' Black Sails'', '' ...

's composition ''When I Am Dead'', published in 2015. Two of Rossetti's poems, "Where Sunless Rivers Weep" and "Weeping Willow", were set to music by Barbara Arens in her ''All Beautiful & Splendid Things: 12 + 1 Piano Songs on Poems by Women'' (2017, Editions Musica Ferrum). Rossetti's "Love is Like a Rose" was set to music by Constance Cochnower Virtue; "Love Me, I Love You," was set to music by Hanna Vollenhoven; and "Song of the Dawn" was set to music by Elise Fellows White. In 2000, one of many Millennium projects across the country was a poetry stone placed in what had been the grounds of North Hill House in Frome. On one side is an excerpt from her poem, "What Good Shall My Life Do Me": "Love lights the sun: love through the dark/Lights the moon's evanescent arc:/Same Love lights up the glow-worms spark." She wrote about her brief stay in Frome, which had "an abundance of green slopes and gentle declivities: no boldness or grandeur but plenty of peaceful beauty". In 2011, Rossetti was a subject of a Radio 4 programme, ''In Our Time''. The title of

J. K. Rowling Joanne Rowling ( ; born 31 July 1965), known by her pen name , is a British author and philanthropist. She is the author of ''Harry Potter'', a seven-volume fantasy novel series published from 1997 to 2007. The series has List of best-sell ...

's novel, '' The Cuckoo's Calling'' (2013), is from a line in Rossetti's poem, ''A Dirge''. The complete poem is the epigraph to the novel. Christina Rossetti is commemorated in the

calendar on 27 April.

Ancestry

Publications

Poetry collections

* ''Verses'', London: privately printed, 1847 * '' Goblin Market and Other Poems'', London: Macmillan, 1862 ** 1876, author's revised edition * '' The Prince's Progress and Other Poems'', London: Macmillan, 1866 * ** ''Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems''. London: Macmillan, 1879 * ''Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book'' (1872, 1893) * '' A Pageant and Other Poems'' (1881) * ''Verses'', London:

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) is a United Kingdom, UK-based Christians, Christian charity. Founded in 1698 by Thomas Bray, it has worked for over 300 years to increase awareness of the Christians, Christian faith in the Un ...

, 1893 * ''New Poems'', London: Macmillan, 1896Christina Rossetti Bibliography
– UK First Edition Books," Bookseller World, Web, 19 May 2011. * ''The Rossetti Birthday Book'', London: privately printed, 1896 * ''The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti'', ed. William Michael Rossetti, London: Macmillan, 1904 * ''The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti'', ed. Rebecca W. Crump with publication notes, in three volumes,

Baton Rouge Baton Rouge ( ; , ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It had a population of 227,470 at the 2020 United States census, making it List of municipalities in Louisiana, Louisiana's second-m ...

: Louisiana State University Press, 1979–1985 * When I am Dead my Dearest

Fiction

''Commonplace and Other Stories''
London: Ellis, 1870 * ''Speaking Likenesses'', London: Macmillan, 1874

Non-fiction

''Called to Be Saints''
London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1881 * "Dante, an English Classic", ''Churchman's Shilling Magazine and Family Treasury'' 2 (1867), pp. 200–205 * "Dante: The Poet Illustrated out of the Poem". '' The Century'' (February 1884), pp. 566–573
''The Face of the Deep''
London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1893
''Seek and Find: A Double Series of Short Studies of the Benedicite''
London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1879
''Time Flies: A Reading Diary''
London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1885

References

Sources

* David Clifford and Laurence Roussillon, ''Outsiders Looking In: The Rossettis Then and Now''. London: Anthem, 2004 * * Antony Harrison, ''Christina Rossetti in Context''. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1988 * Maura Ives, ''Christina Rossetti: A Descriptive Bibliography''. New Castle, D.E.: Oak Knoll, 2011 * Kathleen Jones, ''Christina Rossetti: Learning Not To Be First'' * Kathleen Jones, ''Learning Not to be First: A Biography of Christina Rossetti''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991 * Jan Marsh, Introduction, Christina Rossetti, ''Poems and Prose''. London: Everyman, 1994. xvii–xxxiii * Jan Marsh, ''Christina Rossetti: A Writer's Life''. New York: Viking, 1994 *

External links

Poems and poetry at the Poetry Foundation

Profile at Poets.org

"Christina Rossetti"
'' In our time'', BBC Radio 4 (audio, 45 minutes)
Rossetti Family Correspondence
at University of Kansas Libraries * * *
Open Library
* * *
Christina Rossetti in ''Encyclopedia of Fantasy'' (1997)
* Christina Rossetti Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Rossetti, Christina 1830 births 1894 deaths Anglo-Catholic poets Burials at Highgate Cemetery English Christian hymnwriters English Anglo-Catholics English hymnwriters English people of Italian descent English women poets English fantasy writers Writers from the London Borough of Camden Polidori–Rossetti family Sonneteers Victorian poets Victorian women writers 19th-century English women writers 19th-century English writers Anglo-Catholic writers English women hymnwriters British people of Italian descent Christina Poets from London Women philatelists 19th-century English short story writers English women short story writers Victorian short story writers People associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood 19th-century English poets