3-078-320 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The late Miss Christina Rossetti, 1895. Photo by Elliott and Fry. 'She inherited a passionate devotion for religion...Her first volume of poems was privately printed...at the age of sixteen..."Goblin Market, and Other Poems," was published [by Macmillan in 1862]. It has met with growing appreciation, which its very unusual form and style fully deserve. Four years later came "The Prince's Progress," and in 1870 the exquisite volume entitled "Sing-Song, a Nursery Rhyme- Book," made Miss Rossetti beloved by old and young. Since then her poetry has chiefly been concerned with sacred themes...There was an ecstasy about her poetry which sets her alone among the women poets of this century; she used the whole gamut of emotions with consummate skill, and while she could thrill us with the story of "A Royal Princess," she could turn aside to humour as refined as pathos...she was her brother's model for his famous painting "The Girlhood of the Virgin".' Christina, sister of the poet-painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was considered a possible successor to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, as poet laureate, but she developed a fatal cancer in 1891, and died aged 64. From "Illustrated London News", 1895.