Christina Rossetti is best remembered as one of the Pre-Raphaelites. While technically not a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood herself (she was, after all, a woman), her brother Dante Gabriel was one of its founders and she remains one of the biggest names in the Pre-Raphaelite movement as a whole. As well as modelling for several famous paintings, she was a poet of distinction in her own right and served to renew the lessons and themes from the classics, folk tale and faerytale in her own time, drawing from both her Italian roots and adopted English culture. This adoption of English culture included High Anglicanism, although she tended towards Anglo-Catholicism not as a return to Roman Catholicism, but as a rejection of liberalism within the church. Indeed, she rejected a marriage proposal by Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painter James Collinson after he reverted back to Roman Catholicism, having converted to High Anglicanism for the engagement with Rossetti.
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| Cover illustration by Dante Gabriel Rossetti |
