Christina Rossetti (Magill Book Reviews)
At a glance:
- Author: Jan Marsh
- First Published: 1994
- Type of Work: Biography
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: Family or family life, Abused persons, Literature, Art or artists, Poetry or poets, Mental illness, Religious life, Victorian era or Victorianism
- Locales: England
Jan Marsh’s CHRISTINA ROSSETTI: A WRITER’S LIFE clearly situates its subject among the prevailing artistic influences of Victorian England and the poets she most admired and most resembles. Rossetti knew she could not duplicate the epic scope of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Even so, the featured poem of her THE PRINCE’S PROGRESS AND OTHER POEMS (1866) deftly mixes Arthurian elements like those Tennyson favors with Rossetti’s own preference for Bunyanesque allegory.
Rossetti’s lyric poetry resembles that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a poet she admired and with whom Victorian critics compared her. Marsh links several of Rossetti’s lyric works with two disappointments in love which marked the poet’s life. Her arguments for this are cogent despite the poet’s determination during her lifetime to discourage such personal interpretations. Sadly, unlike Barrett Browning, Rossetti’s grand passions remained unfulfilled.
Marsh also discusses at length Rossetti’s place in her famous family. She shows that the influence of the poet’s elder brother, Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, was often domineering as much as constructive. Rossetti’s younger brother William Michael and elder sister Maria Francesca remained lifelong advisers, however, especially in practical matters. A sensational element is Marsh’s contention that Rossetti’s father Gabrielle Rossetti could have sexually abused his daughter during her teenage years. No firm evidence supports this, however, despite Marsh’s arguments.
A particular strength of Marsh’s study is her explications of Rossetti’s lesser known works. These include her children’s and devotional verse as well as her short prose. Marsh manages to prove that even this much disparaged material has its merits.
Sources for Further Study
The Atlantic. CCLXXVI, August, 1995, p. 106.
Choice. XXXIII, December, 1995, p. 617.
London Review of Books. XVII, October 19, 1995, p. 16.
New Statesman and Society. VII, January 6, 1995, p. 40.
The New York Review of Books. XLII, November 2, 1995, p. 35.
The New York Times Book Review. C, July 30, 1995, p. 5.
The Observer. January 1, 1995, p. 16.
Publishers Weekly. CCXLII, June 5, 1995, p. 46.
The Times Literary Supplement. February 17, 1995, p. 4.
The Wall Street Journal. July 25, 1995, p. A10.
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