Christina Georgina Rossetti was born on December 5, 1830, the youngest of four children. Her father, Gabriele, an Italian political refugee, was himself a poet and musician. Her mother, of half-Italian parentage, wrote a popular book on Dante, and her older brother, Dante Gabriel, became a noted poet and a leader of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Because of financial problems, the Rossettis moved from Portland Place to Mornington Crescent in 1851 so that Christina and her mother could open a small day school for children, thus providing a financial base for the family. By 1854, William Rossetti, Christina’s brother, then a clerk in a revenue office, had rented a house on Albany Street, where the family lived together. After Christina’s father died in that year, her mother and her siblings lived on there until 1867, and it was only because of William’s marriage to Lucy Brown in 1874 that Christina and her mother moved to Torrington Square.
Christina was not a world traveler, but her few experiences abroad did affect her poetry. She went abroad but twice, once in 1861 and again in 1865, and it was the Italian journey that is reflected in so much of her writing. She wrote some poetry in Italian, but her love for Italy can be seen in much of her English work. One excellent example is “Vanna’s Twins,” the story of an Italian family living in England.
Her first book, published in 1847 when she was seventeen, was a collection of poems privately printed by her grandfather Gaetena Polidori, himself a writer. The volume titled Verses contained sixty-six pages of poems written by Rossetti between the ages of twelve and sixteen. The longest piece...
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