Poems and Prose

by Christina Rossetti, Jan Marsh (Editor)

'The mystery of Life, the mystery
Of Death, I see Darkly as in a glass...'

Christina Rossetti (1830-94) is perhaps the most contradictory of the great Victorian poets. She writes of the world's beauty, but fears that it may be deceptive, even deadly. She is a religious poet, but much of her work is driven by uncertainty. Her poems are restrained, even secretive, but they seek nothing less than the mystery of Life and Death.

This edition contains Rossetti's strongest and most distinctive work: poetry (including 'Goblin Market', 'The Prince's Progress', and the sonnet sequence 'Monna Innominata'), stories (including the complete text of Maude), devotional prose (with nearly fifty entries from the 'reading diary' Times Flies), and personal letters. Those poems which Rossetti published, and those which she withheld from publication, are here brought together in chronological order, allowing the reader to observe her poetic trajectory. This edition also records the major revisions made by Rossetti when preparing her poems for publication. It brings together the fullest range of Rossetti's poetry and prose in one volume, and is an indispensable introduction to this entrancing writer.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Christian, Victorian, Literary Fiction, Literature, 19th Century

488 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 1995

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

[Jenn Kause · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry I haven't done since grade school- but this was a fun and solitary activity to explore again.
Topics of love (unrequited or lost), loneliness, chronic illness, God in nature and in religion, womanhood, and so much more were exciting topics to dive into at a slow pace.

[chloe · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5; enjoyed a handful of the poems but the prose was just so tedious… reading the short stories sort of felt like listening to someone explaining the dream they had last night in great detail

[Michaela Lazarou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tehe! I finished this a while ago but forgot to update it! So beautiful, so sad, so religious. She just gets me like that :P

[Alyssa Bohon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure if CGR is one of my favorite writers of all time, or just a kindred spirit from another century, but I have come to love her quite completely.

This volume is full of treasures, one of the most remarkable being a short novel called 'Commonplace' reminiscent of a Jane Austen romance, though briefer and more gently pious (still with satire).

[Descending Angel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rossetti is a great but overlooked poet of the 19th century. This collects together her poetry, some short stories, letters and some other prose work. I don't think she was great at writing prose, her short stories are kind of awkward and boring, but her poetry is great. Highlights ~ "Sappho" "The dead city" "Remember" " Moonshine" "By the water" "The Heart Knoweth Its Own Bitterness" "Goblin market" "The queen of hearts" "The Prince's Progress" "Mirrors of Life and Death" and "Monna Imnominata".

[Bev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christina Rossetti was considered by many of her contemporaries to be Britain's finest living poet. "Goblin Market" is her most famous poem--a poem that I read repeatedly as I made my way through high school and college English classes. But I had discovered her long before that...in a small volume of "best-loved poems" found on the shelves of the Wabash Carnegie Library. I promptly fell in love and then searched in vain for collections of her poetry.....until I discovered this book--Poems & Prose--about three years ago at Borders (before it went away).

Poems & Prose is billed as containing Rossetti's strongest and most distinctive work: poetry (including "Goblin Market", "The Prince's Progress", and the sonnet sequence "Monna Innominata"), stories (including the complete text of "Maude"), devotional prose, and personal letters. The collection includes published work as well as that which she withheld from publication. And the work is presented in chronological order--which gives the reader a chance to see her development as a poet and a writer.

I do wish that I could say that I was as enchanted with Rossetti's work as I was when I first discovered her. Unfortunately, I found the longer poems just that--long. Very long. Long enough to make me lose interest before the end of most of them. The sonnet sequence and the shorter works are lovely and the language of the poems quite beautiful. "Maude" is an interesting short story that is very autobiographical--featuring a young poet and her interactions with contemporaries. The other short stories that I found most interesting were "The Lost Titian," about a missing masterpiece, and "Vanna's Twins," described as a sort of "Babes in the Wood" without the happy ending. "Vanna's Twins" is a very touching and sad story. Overall--three and a half stars, rounded to four on GoodReads.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.

[Demetrius Rogers]

I skipped the prose part; it did not hold nearly the same appeal to me as her verse. Maybe I'll go back and get that someday. But, man alive, her poetry was second to none. Goblin's Market was simply amazing. Her style reminds me of Emily Dickinson, yet has a happier disposition to it. Beautiful lyrics, accessible meaning, sing-song verse, and loaded with biblical content. My favorite poet yet.

[John Peel · Rating 2 out of 5]

When Christina Rossetti is good, she's excellent. For example, her delightfully evocative carol, "In The Bleak Midwinter" or "Song" ("When I am dead, my dearest/Sing no sad song for me"). But the rest of the time she's maudlin, morbid or melancholic. Some of her short stories are enjoyable, but most are rather pointless. Her work is all peaks and valleys - far too many of the latter, sadly. In the end, she's quite depressing.

[Jessica Snell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should note, on this (2020) read, I just read the short poetry (about half the volume), and not the longer, narrative verse, or the novels/novellas.

But, oh! So good. Still so, so good.

Thank God for Christina Rossetti. What a poet!

[grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

took me a long time, but i think christina rossetti was such a lovely poet. i personally preferred her shorter poems.

[Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is, like most Oxford World's Classics titles, a terrific collection of Christina Rossetti's work. Her poems still resonate with many people - spiritual and not - and inspire new poetry and stories today. Enjoyable and recommended.

[Derek]

Week Nine of Victorian Spaces, "Goblin Market" along with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful