Christina Rossetti photo
Public domain image of Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

A selective list of online literary criticism for the nineteenth-century Victorian poet Christina Rossetti, with links to reliable biographical and introductory material and signed, peer-reviewed, and scholarly literary criticism.


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Introduction & Biography

"Christina Rossetti." An introduction to Christina Rossetti that draws on the resources of the British Library, and includes literary criticism and analysis, views of some of her first editions and manuscripts, and material relating the the circle of writers of which she was a part. Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians, British Library.

"Christina Rossetti." Encyclopedia-type introduction to Christina Rossetti's life, themes, style, and techniques. Also, text for some of her most famous poems, a list of her works, and a recommended reading list. Poetry Foundation.

"Christina Rossetti." A very brief biography for Christina Rossetti. Academy of American Poets.

"Christina Rossetti." Prof. George Landow's Victorian Web has essays on Christina Rossetti's writing techniques, themes, biography, and the Victorian background. "Christina Rossetti on Male Desire," a short essay on Christina Rossetti's poem "In an Artist's Studio," which presumably refers to Dante Gabriel Rossetti's relationship with Elizabeth Siddal.

Warne, Vanessa. "Christina Rossetti." Literary Encyclopedia. Eds. Robert Clark, Emory Elliott, Janet Todd. An introduction to Christina Rossetti, from a database that provides signed literary criticism by experts in their field, and is available to individuals for a reasonably-priced subscription. On Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862); A Pageant and Other Poems (1881) [subscription service].

"Christina Georgina Rossetti." An introduction to Christina Rossetti from the religious perspective. Catholic Literature Association, 1933.


Literary Criticism

Chapman, Alison. "Defining the Feminine Subject: D. G. Rossetti's Manuscript Revisions to Christina Rossetti's Poetry." Chapman contends that her brother's changes to Goblin Market and Other Poems and The Prince's Progress and Other Poems are critical to an understanding of Christina Rossetti's relation to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Victorian Poetry 35, 2 (Summer 1997) [free at jstor].

Easley, Alexis. "Gender and the Politics of Literary Fame: Christina Rossetti and 'The Germ.'" Critical Survey 13, 2, Literature, Fame and Notoriety in the Nineteenth Century (2001) pp 61-77 [free at jstor].

Henwood, Dawn. "Christian Allegory and Subversive Poetics: Christina Rossetti's Prince's Progress Re-examined." Henwood maintains that The Prince's Progress successfully overcomes the doctrinal limitations of most of Christina Rossetti's verse. Victorian Poetry, 35, 1 (Spring 1996) [free at jstor].

Kachur, Robert M. "Repositioning the Female Christian Reader: Christina Rossetti as Tractarian Hermeneut in The Face of the Deep." Kachur contends that Christina Rossetti's The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary on the Apocalypse is strikingly original and of central importance to understanding her desire to write as a female subject within a religious framework. Victorian Poetry 35, 2 (Summer 1997) [free at jstor].

Lysack, Krista. "The Economics of Ecstasy in Christina Rossetti's Monna Innominata." Lysack treats Monna Innominata as a sustained development of productive female desire in the form of an ecstatic body, based on Victorian commonplaces of the virgin/whore dichotomy. Victorian Poetry, 36, 4 (Winter 1998) [free at jstor].

McGann, Jerome J. "The Religious Poetry of Christina Rossetti." Critical Inquiry 10 (Sept. 1983) [free at jstor].

Packer, Lona Mosk. "Symbol and Reality in Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market." PMLA 73 (Sept. 1958) [free at jstor].

Sullivan, Brad. "'Grown Sick with Hope Deferred': Christina Rossetti's darker musings." Papers on Language and Literature, Summer 1996 [first half only].


Web Sites

The Dante Gabriel Rossetti Archive, edited by Jerome J. McGann. All the texts of Rossetti, essays on the texts and on Rossetti's style and themes, Rossetti's art, and contextual materials. One of the major research resources on the internet, worth an extended exploration

Web site for The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies, a semi-annual, refereed journal covering Pre-Raphaelite, aesthetic, and decadent art, culture, and literature. The web site provides a list of article titles back to 1987

Details about the Christina Rossetti holdings at Bryn Mawr library, along with a brief biography and reliable secondary bibliography.

"The Pre-Raphaelite Critic: Periodical Criticism of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement 1846 to 1900." An extensive list of nineteenth-century magazine and newspaper articles covering Pre-Raphaelite literature and art, with complete texts.

"Women in the Literary Marketplace," an online exhibit from the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell Univ., contains short entries on several Victorian women authors and their typical themes, information about the publishing context, and some images of first editions.


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