Christina Rossetti was in a sense the first poet of the Pre-Raphelites, her Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862) having been - as if by accident - the writing from that group which first caught public attention. It contains many of her best poems. Later work - devotional poems, love lyrics and descriptive pieces - extended the themes and forms of her first remarkable collection. It is remarkable, but in a quiet and intense way, not in the manner of those who seem to have learned from her among her contemporaries. Ford Madox Ford, who had a subtle ear for the unemphatic excellence of the nineteenth-century writers, called her 'the most valuable poet that the Victorian age produced'. Her modern admirers are many, especially among the poets. Philip Larkin speaks of her poetry as 'unequalled for its objective expression of happiness denied and a certain unfamiliar steely stoicism'.

In this selection C.H. Sisson presents a wide range of her work and in his biographical and critical introduction suggests fresh perspectives on it. Sisson also includes here Rossetti's long-unavailable 'Maude, A Story for Girls', which was written when she was very young and gives some indication of her cast of mind and her skills as a writer of prose fiction. The character of Maude is a severe self-portrait, wry at her own expense. As Sisson says, 'with any poet the starting-point, social as well as literary, is worth finding out about'.

Table of Contents

Introduction



Couplet

Mary Magdalene

Spring Quiet

Song

Bitter For Sweet

Three Stages

  A Pause Of Thought

  The End Of The First Part

     3........

One Certainty

Two Pursuits

A Testimony

Song

After Death

Looking Forward

Remember

Seeking Rest

A Portrait

Endurance

Withering

Twilight Calm

Two Thoughts of Death

Is And Was

The Three Enemies

  The Flesh

  The World

  The Devil

The Summer Is Ended

From The Antique

For Rosaline's Album

Next of Kin

A Pause

Holy Innocents

A Wish

Seasons

Ballad

From The Antique

Listening

Echo

The First Spring Day

My Dream

The Last Look

May

Old And New Year Ditties

Shut Out

A Chilly Night

In The Lane

A Bed Of Forget-Me-Nots

Love From The North

A Better Resurrection

The Heart Knoweth Its Own Bitterness

Fata Morgana

One Day

Introspective

In The Round Tower At Jhansi

Memory

A Birthday

An Apple Gathering

Winter: My Secret

My Friend

Another Spring

Up-Hill

At Home

To-day and To-morrow

Yet A Little While

Goblin Market

L.E.L.

Spring

What Good Shall My Life Do Me?

Cousin Kate

  From the Prince's Progress

Sister Maude

'No, Thank You, John'

Mirage

The Lambs of Grasmere (1860)

Wife to Husband

Promises Like Pie-Crust

The Lowest Place

Song

The Queen of Hearts

A Dumb Friend

Life and Death

Somewhere Or Other

Weary In Well-Doing

Summer

What Would I Give!

Grown and Flown

Eve

Shall I Forget?

Dead Hope

Enrica

Italia, Io Ti Saluto

A Daughter Of Eve

A Dirge

'To-day For Me'

A Christmas Carol

Yet A Little While

'I Wish I Could Remember'

'Youth Gone, And Beauty Gone'

The Key-note

He And She

A Life's Parallels

Pastime

One Sea-side Grave

'Bury Hope'

'Roses On A Brier'

'Heaven's Chimes Are Slow'

'A Cold Wind Stirs'

'Lord What Have I To Offer?

'The Fields Are White'

'Margaret Has a Milking Pail'

Maude: A Story For Girls