Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) is regarded is one of the greatest Christian poets to write in English. While Rossetti has firmly secured her place in the cannon, her religious poetry was for a long time unfashionable within a literary critical field dominated by politics (Marxism; feminism; queer studies) assumed to take its task with Christianity. Recent scholarship readdresses reductive understanding of religion and faith as ideology, while also demonstrating that feminism was at the forefront of nineteenth-century Christian culture. This shift has enabled new readings of Rossetti's work, not simply as a canon of significant nineteenth-century devotional literature, but also as a marker of religion's relevance to modern concern through its reflection on science and materialism, as well as spirituality and mysticism.Emma Mason offers a compelling biography on Christina Rossetti, arguing that her poetry, diaries, letters, and devotional commentaries are engaged with contemporary theological debate, while also forging a phenomenological way into spirituality through a style that poetically captures the experience of faith. Mason suggests this phenomenological style provides a key to understanding Rossetti's spirituality, particular when considered alongside the details of her life such as her role as carer to her father, her association with the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood and other prominent Victorian intellectuals, her charity work, and her own struggles with ill health.