Rossetti Timeline

Rossetti Timeline

20 May 1843, the children produced a newspaper titled, 'The Hodge-Podge or Weekly Efforts.'

Christina's first poems included experiments in lyric, devotional, pastoral, ballad, and fantasy forms. 1940's Rosetti shifted Evangelical to Anglo-Catholic orientation.

Her mother would read to the children: relgious texts such as the Bible, John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's progress and the writings of St Augustine.

Gabriele: Father was an Italian poet and political exile. Frances: Mother was half- English, half-Italian. Trained governess.

Rosetti's childhood was exceptionally happy and charcterized by affectionate parental care and creative companionship of her elder siblings.

Rosetti was prone to tantrums and fractious behaviour,and she fought hard to subdue her passionate temper.

Up until 1839, they would visit Holmer Green to see their Grandfather, this ended due to his moving to London.

For more than 20 years, from 1843, she worshipped at Christ Church, until her conversion in 1850 to Catholism.

In 1943, Gabriele's health collasped leaving him virtually blind and unable to teach.Frances took up being a governess and Maria and Wiliam found employment.

Christina Georgina Rosetti was born on 5 December 1830. Youngest child of an exstroadinarily gifted family.

By her sixteenth birthday she had written more then fifty poems. In 1847, her collected of poems was titled 'Verses' and was privately published by her Grandfather, Polidori.

In 1845, Christina suffered a collaspe and was diagnosed with a heart condition. However, she was suspected by doctors to be mentally ill suffering relgious mania.

In 1847 Dante Gabriel, William, and Christina began a tradition of playing bout rimes. Racing composing a sonnet conforming to a set of endings provided by the third.

Rosetti later returned to mixing genres, prose punctured with poetry. Religious issues play a central role in Maude.

In 1848, at Dante Gabriel's instigation, she submitted two of her poems. They were later nationally published. ('Death's Chill Between' and Heart's Chill Between')

Christina had recurring bout's of depression and it is suggested that they were indications of a supressed sexual trauma.

Late-in 1849 the PRB intiated a periodical, The Germ, as a vechicle fro the members' innovative views on art.

In 1850, Christina wrote Maude: A Story for Girls (1897), a novella that was not published until after her death. (Semi-autobiographical)

During this period Dante Gabriel was gathering around him the circle of young men who named themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. (PRB)

1848, James Collinson proposed to Christina. She refused due to his conversion to Roman Catholicism. He returned to C of E and she accepted. 1850, engagement ended.

During the 1860's Rossetti kept in touch with female artitsts including members of the Portfolio Society. Female poets.

1859 Rossetti began volunteering at the St. Mary Magdalene Penitentiary in Highgate, charitable institution for 'fallen' women.

In 1854, during the Crimean war Christina try to volunteer to join Nightingale's nurses but was turned down.

Gabriele Rossetti, her father passed away on 26 April 1854. Christina was financially supported by her brother William.

In the 1850's a few of Rossetti's poems were published in antologies: 'Maude Clare' 1859 'Lost Titan' 1856 'Nick' 1857

1851 the Rossetti family moved from Charlotte street to camden Town.

1862 the Macmillam firm brought out Rossetti's first comercially published volume of the 'Goblin Market and Other Poems'

In 1865 along with William and their mother they travelled to France, Switzerland and Italy. She also met Robert Browning.

Her mother briefly ran a small day school between march 1853 to February 1854. The family then returned to the city.

The Minor Festivals Devotionally Studied (1881) Time Flies, and The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary on the Apocalypse (1892)

In 1867 Rossetti published in 'The Churchman's Shilling Magazine'. 3 relgious stories.

1873, Maria Rossetti joined the All Saints' Sisterhood. March 1874 William married Lucy Brown.

1876 Rossetti. her mother, her aunts left William's Euston Square home and moved to Torrington Square Bloomsbury. November Maria died of cancer.

Dante Gabriel died in Birchington on Easter Sunday 1882. 25 April 1882, 'Birchington Churchyard' was published in the Anthenaeum.

Dante Gabriel had been prone to insomia and was dependant on alcohol and chloral. He was put into care and tried to commit suicude using landanum.

1892 Rossetti was diagnosed with breast cancer and under went a mastectomy that was performed in her own home.

Between 1870-72 Rossetti was dangerously ill and diagonosed with a rare thyroid condition, exophthalmic bronchocele. Graves' disease.

In autumn 1866 Rossetti declined an offfer of marriage from Charles Bagot Cayley. In 1908 Family Letters of Christina Georgina Rossetti, it is said it was due to relgion.

1886 Rossetti's mother died however Christina kept the house for her elderly aunts Charlotte and Eliza until their deaths 1890 and 1893.

She died on 29 December 1894, after months of acute suffering post the cancer returning.

Family Christina Rossetti Poetry