Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) grew up in a stimulating Anglo-Italian family, the daughter of an exiled Italian poet and politician. In her household, Italian exiles gathered and talked of politics, art, and literature. She and her brothers, Dante and William, wrote poetry and did artwork from childhood on. A deeply religious person, Rossetti became involved in a contemporary movement to restore elements of Catholicism to Anglican religious services. However, her commitment to the Anglican Church was strong enough that she broke off an engagement with one suitor because of his conversion to Catholicism. She later broke off a second relationship because her suitor was insufficiently interested in religion.

Rossetti lived a quiet, thoughtful life, often doing charitable works such as volunteering at a home that we would today call a "women's shelter." Rossetti's first book of poetry, Goblin Market and Other Poems, published in 1862, was an immediate success. On the surface, the title poem seems to tell a simple children's story, but beneath the simplicity lies a depth of religious symbolism.

Rossetti's brother Dante helped to found a group of writers, artists, and critics known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood whose purpose was to promote simplicity, naturalness, and expressiveness in art and literature, on the model of artwork done in Italy before the Renaissance. Christina Rossetti's exquisite poetry is often described as Pre-Raphaelite because of its surface simplicity and gracefulness achieved through a rarely paralleled technical mastery. However, the simplicity of surface in Rossetti's poetry masks a complexity of thought and feeling. Her poems bear reading again and again.

For years, readers and critics tended to dismiss Rossetti because of the sheer variety and magnitude of work by her more famous male contemporaries Tennyson and Browning. However, in recent years her reputation has grown as readers have rediscovered the fine artistry of her work. More than any other poet of her age, she exemplifies the common critical observation that a writer must work hard to make a piece seem simple and easy.