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Christina Georgina Rossetti was born in 1830 in London, England. She was the sister of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and formed the subject of many of his paintings. Her father, Gabriele Rossetti was an Italian poet and political refugee from Naples. Her mother was Frances Polidori, sister of John William Polidori, Lord Byron’s friend and physician. Rossetti began writing when she was seven, but was thirty-one before she saw her first publication. She suffered a dramatic breakdown aged fourteen and left school, further illness triggered bouts of depression. A devout Christian, Rossetti became interested in the Anglo-Catholic movement in the 1840s. She was close to two men, but her religious convictions prevented her from marrying either. During the 1860s and ‘70s she worked in a refuge for former prostitutes. She was widely regarded as one of the most important women poets of the Victorian era. In later life, Rossetti suffered from Graves Disease and developed cancer in 1893, she died the following year. She is buried in Highgate Cemetery.
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