Who am I ? What do I write ? Who were my influences ? My writing style My contemporaries The poem

2. 2 • Who am I? • What do I write? • Who were my influences? • My writing style • My contemporaries • The poem • What you might be asked about it…!

3. Christina Rossetti • Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems. She was one of four children of Italian parents. When she was 14, Rossetti suffered a nervous breakdown and left school. Bouts of depression and related illness followed. During this period her mother, and her sister became deeply interested in the Anglo-Catholicmovement that developed in the Church of England. Religious devotion came to play a major role in Rossetti's life. By the 1880s, recurrent busts of Graves' disease, a thyroid disorder, made Rossetti an enable to do work, and ended her attempts to work as a governess. While the illness stopped her social life, she continued to write poems. Back to main page

4. Notable Works • Christina Rossetti started publishing her poems at the age of 12 and the theme of many of her poems were very bible related. Her most famous collection of poems is called “Goblin Market and Other Poems” which was published in 1862, it is one of her best work. It received wide critical praise which then recognized her as the main female poet of her time. • Other Poems: • A Birthday • In the Bleak Mid-Winter • A Key Note • By The Sea • What Would I Give? • And more poems here Back home

5. Major influences • her fatherGabriele Rossetti • her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti • she was influenced by the strong religious reliefs Anglicanupbringing she received from her mother. • at age of 18 she started studying work from an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker Dante Alighieri. He influenced her greatly. • A group called Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. with English painters and poets who wanted to bring back the "vitality and freshness of the Italian primitives." Back home

6. Written style • She sometimes writes with typological symbolism. Go here to find more about what typological symbolism is. • Many of her works are very Biblical and have Christian themes. Lots of transience of love in her works, which is about how love will only last for so long—It will disappear soon. • Her writing contained many Biblical allusions, and addressed many matters of religious importance. • http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/crossetti/crsym.html for more on Christina Rossetti’s writing style. Back to main page

7. Victorian Poets • Rossetti is a Victorian poet. • The Victorian poets included the Pre-Raphaelites (1848-1860) • Lord Alfred Tennyson • Lewis Carroll • Gerard Manley Hopkins • Her work has been influential to many twentieth century writers including W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomas. • A timeline of Victorian history can be accessed here. Back to main page

8. A Birthday

9. A Birthday (continued) Back to main page

10. IGCSE exam-style questions • Explore the ways in which the poet vividly conveys her feelings about love. • Explore some descriptions you find particularly effective. • Show how the poet finds beauty in the world. • How do the poet’s words vividly reveal her feelings to you? • Explore the ways in which the poet appeals so powerfully to your senses in this poem. Back to main page