Christina Rossetti: poetry in art

Abstract

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) is among the greatest of English Victorian poets. The intensity of her vision, her colloquial style, and the lyrical quality of her verse still speak powerfully to us today, while her striking imagery has always inspired artists. Rossetti lived in an exceptionally visual environment: her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was the leading member of the avant-garde Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and she became a favorite model for the group. She sat for the face of Christ in William Holman Hunt's The Light of the World, while both John Everett Millais and Frederick Sandys illustrated her poetry. Later on, the pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and the great Belgian Symbolist Fernand Khnopff were inspired by Rossetti's enigmatic verses. This engaging book explores the full artistic context of Rossetti's life and poetry: her own complicated attitude to pictures; the many portraits of her by artists, including her brother, John Brett, and Lewis Carroll; her own intriguing and virtually unknown drawings; and the wealth of visual images inspired by her words.

Contents

Introduction / Susan Owens and Nicholas Tromas -- Christina Rossetti's pictures / Nicholas Tromans -- The appearance of Christina Rossetti / Susan Owens -- 'Come and see': Christina Rossetti's illustrations for The Christian Year / Dinah Roe -- Christina Rossetti's books: the poet, her publishers and the illustrators / Stephen Calloway -- 'Pictures to the public view': artists' responses to Christina Rossetti's poetry / Susan Owens, Nicholas Tromans and Hilary Underwood -- Chronology / Tessa Kilgarriff.