Christina Rossettis Gothic

The poetry of Christina Rossetti is often described as ‘gothic' and yet this term has rarely been examined in the specific case of Rossetti's work. Based on new readings of the full range of her writings, from ‘Goblin Market' to the devotional poems and prose works, this book explores Rossetti's use of Gothic forms and images to consider her as a Gothic writer. Christina Rossetti's Gothic analyses the poet's use of the grotesque and the spectral and the Christian roots and Pre-Raphaelite influences of Rossetti's deployment of Gothic tropes.

Christina Rossetti’s famous narrative poem is a gothic fantasy, dangling two young sisters before sin and death. The lyrical masterpiece is brought to life with haunting illustrations by Arthur Rackham. Lizzie and Laura are best friends as well as sisters. They love each other dearly, and nothing can come between them. But when Laura falls victim to temptation and is persuaded to eat the fruit a grotesque group of goblins offer her, the sisters’ relationship is tested. Will Lizzie be able to save Laura from a tragic end? With themes of morality, sin, and redemption, Goblin Market is one of Christina Rossetti’s most popular pieces, first published in 1862. The wonderful poem is accompanied by haunting, dream-like illustrations by Golden Age Illustrator Arthur Rackham. His unique style refines and elucidates Rossetti’s masterful poetry.

Edited collection of Elizabeth Siddall's extant poems, including critical analysis, biographical commentary, and contextual material. Also features illustrations, some by Siddall herself.

Born in 1830, Christina Rossetti began composing verse at the age of eleven and continued to write for the remaining fifty-three years of her life. Her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, himself a poet and painter, soon recognized her genius and urged her to publish her poems. By the time of her death in 1894, Christina had written more than eleven hundred poems and had published over nine hundred of them. Although she is regarded as the greatest woman poet of the Victorian period, there has not been until now and authoritative edition of her poetry. In this second volume of the three-volume The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti, R.W. Crump continues the editorial standards she established n Volume I, published in 1979. She gives the reader a comprehensive text with notes revealing Christina’s process of composition and revision and her painstaking concern for the technical details of her work. The variant readings in the notes are taken from extant manuscripts, individual poems as published or privately printed before being incorporated into her published collections, and all the English and American editions of her poems through William Michael Rossetti’s The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti (1904). A special feature of both Volumes I and II is a complete list of holographs and their locations. Volume II contains Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872), A Pageant and Other Poems (1881), and Verses (1893), as well as the poems added to these volumes after their original publication. Volume III contains poems Christina published but did not include in any of her collections as well as poems that have not previously appeared in print.