Christina Rossetti

The Poetical Works of Christina G Rossetti (Volume II) by Christina G Rossetti, 231 pages

Christina Georgina Rossetti was born in London in the early 19th century.  Her parents were Italians, deeply literary and socially connected with the early Romantics.  One of her brothers was the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Rossetti's poetry is very much in the Romantic tradition, filtered through and intensified by the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic. The simplicity and charm of her verse only accentuates its beauty, and it does not exclude wrestling with questions of transcendent meaning.

Although this volume of her works did not contain some of her best known poems ("Goblin Market", "In the Bleak Midwinter"), there are plenty of gems - especially remarkable is "Monna Innominata", a set of feminine responses to the love poems of Dante and Petrarch.