Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Learning Not To Be First: The Life of Christina Rossetti

Learning Not To Be First: The Life of Christina Rossetti

Jones, Kathleen

Paperback

Biographies GeneralHistorical FiguresLiterary Figures

Publisher Price: $20.00

ISBN10: 1916475019
ISBN13: 9781916475014
Publisher: Book Mill
Published: Jan 19 2019
Pages: 314
Weight: 0.88
Height: 0.70 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

Christina was the youngest of the four Rossetti children, born in England to Italian parents. Although she and her brother, the artist Dante Gabriel, were known as the 'two storms', Christina's passionate nature was curbed in a way that her brother's was not, as she submitted to the social and religious pressures that lay so heavily on Victorian women. Like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she suffered the tyranny of a loving family. Her sister Maria's influence was described as 'a species of police surveillance', and Christina was always careful never to write anything that would hurt her mother. Often referred to as the 'High Priestess of Pre-Raphaelitism' Christina had a genuine lyric gift that could articulate both the joy of being alive and the bitterness of loss. Her desire for poetic excellence and moral excellence were continually in conflict and her poetry betrays the corrosive effect of this struggle. Christina's deliberate self-effacement, Dante Gabriel's portrayal of her as the meek virgin and William Rossetti's subjective role as editor and interpreter of her work have gradually blotted out the passionate lively spirit who wrote 'Goblin Market' - one of the most complex and disturbing poems ever written. Kathleen Jones looks at Christina's life alongside that of other nineteenth-century women writers - notably Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson.

Also in

Literary Figures

View All