This site from the University of Georgia presents a comprehensive catalog of resources on Rossetti's life and work. Information is organized under the following headings: political context, biography, Victorianism, Science, and Literary Relations. Specific to Rossetti's work, the following categories are included: theme, setting, symbolism, characterization, and genre. This site is clearly your one stop on the net for information regarding Christina Rossetti and her work.

BIOGRAPHY
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was born in London, the daughter of an Italian revolutionary intellectual and poet whose activities forced him to flee to London in 1824. He found work there as a professor of Italian at the new University of London, but later he became ill and for many years was confined to the house.

As a member of a creative family, Rossetti was encouraged to write. Her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti was one of the leaders of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in English art and writing, an attempt to return to the artistic style of pre-Renaissance Italy. Christina Rossetti was a devout Anglican and refused two opportunities to marry because of religious differences with her suitors. Her renunciation finally weighed on the mood and the style of her poetry.

The title poem of her first book, Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), was unlike anything else written in the Victorian era. It is a long allegorical narrative with strongly erotic undertones about two sisters and their struggle against temptation. Her later poetry, much of it written after she was diagnosed with Grave's disease in 1871, was often prayer-like, and in those lyrics that dealt with her emotional disappointments, she usually concealed her unhappiness behind conventional phrases.