PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Christina Rossetti was born in 1830 in London. Rossetti and her siblings, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, were educated by their mother and each grew up to excel in their creative endeavors. Their father, a political exile from Italy, fell ill when Rossetti was a teenager and the family suffered financial difficulty. Rossetti was devoted to religion from a young age and it was a major influence on her writing. She published various poems in literary magazines but it was Goblin Market, published in 1862 to great acclaim, that foregrounded her position as a prominent female poet. She became ill towards the end of her life, first from Graves' disease and then from breast cancer, but she continued to write until she died in 1894.
A wonderful fairytale . . . Rossetti allows herself the full freedom of her poetic gifts: her visual sense, her musicality, her skill in both narrative and lyric modes. -- Carol Rumens * Guardian *
