Christina Rossetti was the youngest child of Italian parents living in England.  Like her mother and sister, she was an extremely religious high Anglican.  She was influenced by the Oxford Movement, and may well have refused suitors on the grounds that their religious views were not consonant with hers. Her sister Maria joined an Anglican sisterhood, and Christina herself remained single, living at home with her mother.    She briefly pursued the possibility of  teaching or nursing, but eventually turned to writing.  In the 1860s she volunteered in a home for fallen women.

Christina Rossetti's family encouraged her to write, and through her brothers, William Michael and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, she was introduced to many of the leading artistic personages and ideas of the day, particularly those associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of which Dante Gabriel was a member. Altogether, she produced over 900 poems in English and 60 in Italian, of which many are religious lyrics.  Among women poets of her day, she particularly admired Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Augusta Webster, and, towards the close of the century, Emily Dickinson.  

Christina sometimes modelled for Dante Gabriel's drawing and painting, including sitting for the figure of the Virgin Mary in his painting, Ecce Ancilla Domini (The Annunciation).

• Christina Rossetti on the Victorian Web

• Selected Poems of Christina Rossetti (with a portrait)

• Ecce Ancilla Domini (The Annunciation)

TEXTS:

• "In An Artist's Studio"
  Written 1856

• "A Birthday"
  Written 1857; first published in Macmillan's Magazine (1861)

• "An Apple Gathering"
  Written 1857; first published in Macmillan's Magazine (1861)

• "A Better Resurrection"
  Written 1857

• "At Home"
  Written 1858

• Goblin Market
  First published in her first collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems,1862