’Today is still the same as yesterday.’ Illustration by Florence Harrison (1877–1955) for ‘Poems by Christina Rossetti’ (The One Certainty).

I will make fast my door.' Illustration by Florence Harrison (1877–1955) for ‘Poems by Christina Rossetti’

Portrait of Christina Rossetti. 1866. Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Christina Rossetti's burial, January 2, 1895

The grave of Christina Rossetti, in Highgate Cemetery, London

A Christina Rossetti Letter

http://cultureandanarchy.wordpress.com/tag/christina-rossetti/

1884 Poem by Christina Rossetti

1884 Poem by Christina Rossetti, Portrait of Christina and her Mother by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1877.

below is a transcript of the poem.

Another year of joy and grief,
Another year of hope and fear:
Oh Mother, is life long or brief?
We hasten while we linger here.

But since we linger, love me still, 
And help me still, O Mother mine
While hand in hand we seale life’s hill,
You Guide, and I your Valentine.

Speaking Likenesses

http://archive.org/stream/speakinglikenes00hughgoog#page/n4/mode/2up

Alice fans might be interested in checking out Christina Rossetti’s longest work for children, Speaking Likenesses, which was published in 1874, three years after Through the Looking-Glass. It’s no secret that Charles Dodgson was friends with the Rossetti family (he even photographed them), and the influence of Alice on Speaking Likenesses is clear. Rossetti herself even acknowledged the Alice books as an inspiration in a letter to her brother Dante Gabriel, though she admitted to it being ‘merely a Christmas trifle’ in comparison. It’s essentially three short stories about three little girls — Flora, Edith and Maggie — who each have their own odd adventures; the tales are narrated by an aunt to her young nieces, and the childrens’ queries and comments continually intersperse the text in parentheses. In the first story, the most overtly Alice-esque, Flora falls asleep during her birthday party and passes through a door in a tree into a mirror-lined room filled with living furniture and a number of deformed children. Ruling over all is the ‘Birthday Queen’, an aggressive little girl who appears to be Flora’s sinister twin. The other two stories feature talking animals and, disturbingly, a boy whose face is one giant mouth. The title Speaking Likenesses means that the three girls each encounter, in Rossetti’s own words, ‘embodiments or caricatures of themselves or their faults’. Here, then, Rossetti is more moralising than Dodgson, and Flora, Edith and Maggie all finish their adventures having learnt some important life lesson or other. I actually found Speaking Likenesses a rather disquieting read: whilst the Alice books have their death jokes and bizarre transformations, their child protagonist certainly isn’t subjected to an unsettling game called ‘Hunt the Pincushion’ in which she is chased and pricked with pins and other sharp objects. The illustrations of Speaking Likenesses are by Arthur Hughes, a Pre-Raphaelite artist and also a close friend of Dodgson’s, and the drawings clearly show the inspiration of John Tenniel in Hughes’s depiction of the three girls. So, yes, after all this rambling, it’s an interesting little curiosity if you’ve got nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon; it can be read entirely for free online on the Internet Archive. An essay on Speaking Likenesses and its contexts by Julia Briggs can be found in The Culture of Christina Rossetti: Female Poetics and Victorian Contexts.

from the very good
http://funeral-wreaths.tumblr.com/

Christina Rossetti - Sing-Song, A Nursery-Rhyme Book.

[Hughes, Arthur] Sing-Song, A Nursery-Rhyme Book. Rossetti, Christina. London: George Routledge and Sons., 1872. First Edition, First Issue. 8vo. Original green cloth with charming gilt illustration and lettering front cover and spine, light yellow endpapers. Superb full-page frontispiece and illustrations every page by ARTHUR HUGHES. 130pp. Two page Routledge ads at back. Covers sl. wear with corners bumped, occasional thumbing, very good and tight internally. A very presentable copy of one of the classic illustrated books by the Pre-Raphaelite circle. http://www.nudelmanbooks.com/pages/books/280/christina-rossetti/hughes-arthur-sing-song-a-nursery-rhyme-book

The Rossetti family

This photograph shows the Rossetti family in the garden of Tudor House, 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London. This was the home of the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Represented from left to right are Dante Gabriel, Christina and their mother Frances (both seated) and William Michael. Lewis Carroll, poet and mathematician, is best known as the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. He was introduced to Rossetti by his friend, the sculptor Alexander Munro. Photography was invented when Carroll was aged ten and he took it up as a hobby in his early twenties, specialising in pictures of young girls and famous people. He was pleased to be invited by Rossetti to use Tudor House as a venue for posing his sitters.

Christina Rossetti, Frome, Somerset

About seven miles from where I type. She and her mother ran a young ladies school in Frome (Brunswick Place on the Trowbridge Rd) from April 1852- Autumn 1854. She was the niece of the governess at Longleat House, which is presumably what made them choose Frome to locate the school (they were Londoners). The school was not profitable, and they gave up the venture and returned to London.

The Letters of Christina Rossetti: 1874-1881 (Letters of Christina Rossetti) (Hardcover)

http://www.tower.com/letters-christina-rossetti-1874-1881-antony-h-harrison-hardcover/wapi/100774939

Burial of Christina Rossetti

The burial of Christina Georgina Rossetti (including Glendinning Nash; William Michael Rossetti and family)

January 1895

Dream Land - Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti -Goblin Market

Christina Rossetti photo

http://www.bridgemanart.com/image/English-Photographer-19th-century/Christina-Rossetti-b-w-photo/a9672004e3234ef597777e66695d43b5?key=rossetti&filter=CBPOIHV&thumb=x150&num=15&page=9

Christina Rossetti poem Raven - music by Joe St.Johanser Fragment 5

The Long Hours Come and Go title page 1866

About the poems of Christina Rossetti British Library

http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/poetryperformance/rossetti/josephinehart/aboutrossetti.html

Christina Rossetti

In an Artist's Studio

One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-green,
A saint, an angel --every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.