To Read and Dream

by Christina Rossetti

One of the finest poets of the Victorian age, Christina Rosetti is known today for the directness, clarity and unmatched lyricism of her works. This selection brings together some of her finest verses, love lyrics and sonnets for the contemporary reader. Spanning themes like love, death, loss, womanhood and devotion to pleasures both earthly and divine, these are poems of startling beauty, as evocative and relevant today as when they were first published.

Genres: Poetry, Classics

144 pages, Paperback

Published April 17, 2025

About the author

Christina Georgina Rossetti, sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, wrote lyrical religious works and ballads, such as "Up-hill" (1861).

Frances Polidori Rossetti bore this most important women poet writing in nineteenth-century England to Gabriele Rossetti. Despite her fundamentally religious temperament, closer to that of her mother, this youngest member of a remarkable family of poets, artists, and critics inherited many of her artistic tendencies from her father.

Dante made seemingly quite attractive if not beautiful but somewhat idealized sketches of Christina as a teenager. In 1848, James Collinson, one of the minor pre-Raphaelite brethren, engaged her but reverted to Roman Catholicism and afterward ended the engagement.

When failing health and eyesight forced the professor into retirement in 1853, Christina and her mother started a day school, attempting to support the family, but after a year or so, gave it away. Thereafter, a recurring illness, diagnosed as sometimes angina and sometimes tuberculosis, interrupted a very retiring life that she led. From the early 1860s, she in love with Charles Cayley, but according to her brother William, refused to marry him because "she enquired into his creed and found he was not a Christian." Milk-and-water Anglicanism was not to her taste. Lona Mosk Packer argues that her poems conceal a love for the painter William Bell Scott, but there is no other evidence for this theory, and the most respected scholar of the Pre-Raphaelite movement disputes the dates on which Packer thinks some of the more revealing poems were written.

All three Rossetti women, at first devout members of the evangelical branch of the Church of England, were drawn toward the Tractarians in the 1840s. They nevertheless retained their evangelical seriousness: Maria eventually became an Anglican nun, and Christina's religious scruples remind one of Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot's Middlemarch : as Eliot's heroine looked forward to giving up riding because she enjoyed it so much, so Christina gave up chess because she found she enjoyed winning; pasted paper strips over the antireligious parts of Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon (which allowed her to enjoy the poem very much); objected to nudity in painting, especially if the artist was a woman; and refused even to go see Wagner's Parsifal, because it celebrated a pagan mythology.

After rejecting Cayley in 1866, according one biographer, Christina (like many Victorian spinsters) lived vicariously in the lives of other people. Although pretty much a stay-at-home, her circle included her brothers' friends, like Whistler, Swinburne, F.M. Brown, and Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). She continued to write and in the 1870s to work for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. She was troubled physically by neuralgia and emotionally by Dante's breakdown in 1872. The last 12 years of her life, after his death in 1882, were quiet ones. She died of cancer.

Reviews

[angel]

”Led by a single star,
She came from very far
To seek where shadows are
Her pleasant lot.” ෆ

[Andy]

Four or five really memorable poems, and quite a lot which were pleasant but pretty forgettable. Worth it for a few gems though.

[Sammy]

Quite enjoyed Goblin Market, even if it was a little too long and repetitive, but I'm afraid the rest of the collection did nothing for me.

[Puck]

"Downstairs I laugh, I sport and jest with all:
But in my solitary room above
I turn my face in silence to the wall;
My heart is breaking for a little love.
Tho' winter frosts are done,
and birds pair every one
and leaves peep out, for springtide is begun.

- L.E.L., Rossetti

A wonderful introduction to the writing of Christina Rossetti; I only knew her as a successful Victorian poet, even in her own time, but I had never read anything by her. To Read and Dream contains her (most?) famous poem 'Goblin Market', but also many poems about nature and the seasons, (lost) romance, the stages of womanhood, death, and finding the divine on earth ánd in heaven.

I would find this collection very comforting to read while suffering from loss or a broken heart, or as a good inspiration to admire the beauty and strength of nature in its many stages.

[geikew]

“Therefore myself is that one only thing
I hold to use or waste, to keep or give;
My sole possession every day I live,”

[Camille]

The pleasure I remember, it is past;
The pain I feel, is passing passing by;
This all the world is passing, and thus I:
All things that cannot last
Have grown familiar, and are born to die.

Last book of the month!!

Absolutely fascinating how Rossetti constantly intermingles love and death in these poems.

[Anna McKenzie]

“I did not chide him, thơ I knew
That he was false to me:
Chide the exhaling of the dew,
The ebbing of the sea,
The fading of a rosy hue,
But not inconstancy.

Why strive for love when love is o'er?
Why bind a restive heart?
He never knew the pain I bore
In saying: We must part;
Let us be friends, and nothing more:—
Oh woman's shallow art!

But it is over, it is done;
I hardly heed it now;
So many weary years have run
Since then, I think not how
Things might have been; but greet each one
With an unruffled brow.”

Damn someone was really putting professional yearner Christina Rossetti through some bullshit situationship huh??? No one is safe! Beautiful collection, thoroughly enjoyed and will likely return!

[Juli]

And I am sometimes proud and sometimes meek,
And sometimes remember days of old
When fellowship seemed not so far to seek
And all the world and I seemed much less cold,
And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold,
And hope felt strong and life itself not weak.

[Mary]

Definitely not bad, but not crazy or outstanding for me personally.
There was more sadness than I expected, but overall I had a good time reading this collection. There were a few poems that I really resonanted with, and there were some beautiful lines that stood out to me too.

My personal faves:
Redeeming the Time
An Old-World Thicket
They Desire A Better Country
A Pause of Thought

3.5/5

[aleena]

Beautiful, cathartic, an emotional hospital bedside read. Beautiful gift from Megan ❤️

[Dan Gordon]

A truly beautiful, lyrical, and impactful set of poems. The entire collection had a tender, melancholic feel that only amplified my enjoyment. I found narrating them aloud to myself really helped them spring to life.

The entire collection was good, but my personal favourites were; when I am dead my dearest, goblin market, autumn violets, a castle-builders world, winter rain, and the lowest room. This small sample was just so evocative and fun to read.

‘Well twenty years have passed since then: My sister now a stately wife. Still fair, looks back in peace and sees the longer half of life— The longer half of prosperous life, with little grief, or fear, or fret: She, loved and loving long ago, Is loved and loving yet.’

[Sohxpie]

I love the concept of the Penguin Archives series and was so happy to see that Christina Rossetti was included! She is my favourite poet. I really loved this collection, especially the nature themed poems. The poems that described flowers and natural landscapes were brilliant. I related more than I'd have liked to the poems about grief, such a beautiful way to put those feelings into words. I was a little disappointed to see the Goblin Market included, not because I don't like the poem but because I feel like this is the perfect opportunity to showcase other poems of Rossetti's and most of her collections include The Goblin Market anyway.

[Daphne Harries]

A really wonderful collection of Rossetti’s poems. Perfect for travelling with. It features her most popular ones, as well as some smaller poems that are a testament to how sustained her imagination is. There aren’t many 19th century poets that I actually like, but Rossetti is one of them. This collection of her poems made her work somehow more modern? Its composition is less consistently thematic, instead tying three or so poems together each time through similar rhymes or images or emotions. We revisit grief, unrequitedness, love, and hope. It feels like experiencing life when we do. It’s nice to have the secondhand aspect of it a bit more hazy!

[Gabriela]

The pleasure I remember, it is past;
The pain I feel, is passing passing by;
Thus all the world is passing, and thus I:
All things that cannot last
Have grown familiar, and are born to die.

Poems I would like to come back to:
Sappho
Have you forgotten?
Heart's Chill Between
At Home
L.E.L.
Goblin Market
At Last
The Thread of Life
An Old-World Thicket
The Iniquity of the Fathers upon the Children

[Clara]

'Redeeming the Time'
A life of hope deferred too often is
A life of wasted opportunities;
A life of perished hope too often is
A life of all-lost opportunities:
Yet hope is but the flower and not the root,
And hope is still the flower and not the fruit;—
Arise and sow and weed: a day shall come
When also thou shalt keep thy harvest home.

[Rachel]

Haven’t been sleeping & what a wonderful companion this has been! There’s something so comforting about a Victorian woman describing exactly what you’re feeling, the whole collection is just so girlhood

[Niko]

3.5/5

[Thea Paraskeva]

Can't believe I'm discovering Rossetti just now. Absolutely beautiful.

[Sena]

An amazing poet but have to admit that Victorian age poetry is not exactly my cup of tea. However, goblin market was absolutely amazing.

[Matt Price]

“it is an empty name I long for; to a name why should I give
The peace of all the days I have to live?”

Love Rosetti and love this collection and the cute little book they come in.

[Daffa Ghifari]

they said the title of the book in the end

[Shree]

Except for a couple of poems, it was very basic.

[tragedy]

sappho was my favourite poem

[Madison Giorgi]

She writes about nature in this really fairy tale/storybook kind of way that makes me want to live in her writing

[Av S]

Possibly my new favourite collection of poems ! Who could have seen that coming ! "L.E.L - 'Whose heart was breaking for a little love.'" is the favourite of the bunch

[S. Noelle]

🪦 • 🐈 • 💭 • 🪺 • 🍏 • 👭🏻 • 🌹 • 🌬️• 🍃• ❤️‍🩹

A dear gift and my introduction to Rossetti. Her musings on solitude, sisterhood, and scenery struck a chord.

[Wendela Rang]

That was beautiful

[Kayleigh]

Such a gorgeous set of poems. Christina Rossetti has truly beautiful lyricism and each one conveys such a profound sense of emotion, I was in awe.

[Niamh Lusson]

3.5 stars

[Cato Van Heuven]

Beautiful. Brilliant. My favourite Victorian poet (!).