Christina Rossetti

Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) was an English writer of romantic and devotional poems, including "Goblin Market" and "Remember". She was the youngest sister of the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and features in several of his paintings, including Ecce Ancilla Domini! (1850). Some of her early poetry, such as "Goblin Market", was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite movement. She also wrote the words of two Christmas carols well known in Britain: "In the Bleak Midwinter", later set to music by Gustav Holst, Katherine Kennicott Davis, and Harold Darke, and "Love Came Down at Christmas", also set to music by Darke and other composers. Her work has influenced the writings of Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Elizabeth Jennings, and Philip Larkin. Christina was affected throughout her life by ill-health and depression. She never married, despite receiving three offers, but devoted her life to her poetry and her religious faith.