Christina Rossetti

"Keeping her primary focus on the poems themselves, Constance W. Hassett traces Christina Rossetti's career through her five poetry collections, Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), The Prince's Progress and Other Poems (1866), Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872), A Pageant and Other Poems (1881), and Verses (1893). In a comprehensive account of Rossetti's evolving style and genre, Hassett analyzes the strengths and failures of the poetry, its attention to the resources of rhythm and the shifts of diction, its momentum and reserve, and the rationale for its revision. The book also explores Rossetti's innovative poetry for children, her daring reconfiguration of religion and poetry in a late-life commentary on the Apocalypse, and the influences both of female precursors she admired and outgrew and of the male circle of Pre-Raphaelite poets."--Jacket.