‘The mystery of Life, the mystery Of Death, I see Darkly as in a glass…’

Christina Rossetti (1830-94) is perhaps the most contradictory of the great Victorian poets. She writes of the world’s beauty, but fears that it may be deceptive, even deadly. She is a religious poet, but much of her work is driven by uncertainty. Her poems are restrained, even secretive, but they seek nothing less than the mystery of Life and Death.

Christina Rossetti: her life and times

• Listen to Simon Humphries of Linacre College, Oxford, the editor of the new edition of Rossetti’s Poems and Prose, introduce Christina Rossetti and her remarkable family by clicking here.
• Religion was of central importance to Christina Rossetti’s life and art. Click here to hear an introduction to the religious debates of her time.

Introducing the Poems

• The visible world for Rossetti was forever under the sway of invisible forces. Click here to listen to Simon Humphries read ‘Who has seen the wind?’  from Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872) and discuss the ways in which an awareness of Rossetti’s theological concerns can enlarge our understanding of a deceptively simple poem.
• Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘Song’ (‘When I am dead, my dearest, sing no sad songs for me’) seems to draw on conventional poetic material such as roses, nightingales, cypress trees and love and death. But in Rossetti’s hands, the poet’s  contemplated detachment from worldly things takes on strikingly large theological questions. Click here to hear more.
• In her forties, Rossetti began writing a series of books for the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. Click here to hear Simon Humphries discuss ‘Earth grown old’ from her reading diary, Time Flies, a poem which looks forward to the second coming of Christ.

Literary Legacy

• Christina Rossetti’s poetry, antithetical to the modernist sensibility, fell out of favour in the early part of the twentieth century. But in recent decades her work has been rediscovered, not least by feminist critics, though she is far from an uncomplicated figure to champion. Hear more about her literary legacy by clicking here.