cover image Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti

Jan Marsh. Viking Books, $29.95 (640pp) ISBN 978-0-670-83517-1

Reclusive, melancholy poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) waged ``a lifelong struggle with feminist desires'' and attempted to reconcile ambition and autonomy with the Victorian ideal of womanhood, in Marsh's analysis. Rossetti, who believed herself descended from Petrarch's Laura (a claim with little if any foundation), campaigned against cruelty to animals, and her volunteer work with prostitutes at Highgate penitentiary inspired her allegorical poem Goblin Market. Marsh (The Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood) illuminates Rossetti's sibling rivalry with her flamboyant brother, painter-poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and shows how the despair and paranoia of their invalid father, Gabriele, an embittered Italian exile-poet-librettist-professor, helped trigger Christina's adolescent breakdown, which left her with a lifelong tendency to guilt and self-castigation. Quoting extensively from the poetry, Marsh unlocks Rossetti's intense inner life in an engrossing, nuanced biography. She also explores the poet's fanciful tales and devotional writings to uncover her private battle with grief and preoccupation with death. Photos. (July)