Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti wrote a number of romantic, devotional and children's poems. She is famous for writing Goblin Market and Remember  and the words of the Christmas carols In the Bleak Midwinter, set to music by composer Gustav Holst, and Love Came Down at Christmas.

Christina Rossetti was born in Charlotte Street (now 105 Hallam Street), London. She had two brothers and a sister: Dante Gabriel Rossetti became an influential artist and poet, and William Michael Rossetti and Maria Rossetti both became writers.

Rossetti began writing down and dating her poems from 1842, most of which imitated her favoured poets. In 1847 she began experimenting with verse forms such as sonnets, hymns and ballads, while drawing narratives from the Bible, folk tales and the lives of saints. 

Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun.

She published her first two poems Death's Chill Between and Heart's Chill Between in the Athenaeum in 1848, when she was 18. Under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne she contributed to the literary magazine, The Germ, published by the Pre-Raphaelites from January to April 1850 and edited by her brother William - marking the beginning of her public career.

Her most famous collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems, appeared in 1862, when she was 31. It received widespread critical praise, establishing her as the foremost female poet of the time.

Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I but when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing by.

In the Bleak Midwinter is a Christmas carol based on her poem A Christmas Carol which was originally published in the January 1872 issue of Scribner's Monthly. It has become widely known throughout the English speaking world and after her death, it was set to music, first by Gustav Holst in 1906 and then by Harold Darke in 1911. 

Her poem Love Came Down at Christmas (1885) has also been widely arranged as a carol.

Rossetti maintained a large circle of friends and correspondents, and continued to write and publish for the rest of her life, focusing mainly on devotional writing and children's poetry. In 1892, she wrote The Face of the Deep, a book of devotional prose and oversaw production of a new and enlarged edition of Sing-Song in 1893.

Choose love not in the shallows but in the deep.

In 1893, she developed breast cancer and though the tumour was removed, there was a recurrence in September 1894. She died in Bloomsbury on 29 December 1894 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. The place where she died, in Torrington Square, is marked with a stone tablet.

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