Birth of Christina Georgina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti was born on 5 December 1830 at 38 Charlotte Street (now 105 Hallam Street) in Marylbone, London to Gabriele Rossetti and Frances Polidori.

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founded

In September 1848, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The brotherhood reacts, in part, against the use of bitumen, a transparent brown used for depicting exaggerated shadows, aiming instead to reproduce the sharp, brilliant colors found in fifteenth-century art. Image: Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: albumen print. This photograph, from 7 October 1863, was reproduced as the frontispiece of: Rossetti, William Michael, Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer. London: Cassell and Company, 1898.

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“The Blessed Damozel”

In February 1850, publication of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “The Blessed Damozel.” Image: The Blessed Damozel, oil on canvas, Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University. Completed c. 1871-78. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Dante Gabriel Rossetti moves to 17 Red Lion Square

17 Red Lion Square, London

On 13 January 1851, Dante Gabriel Rossetti moved to 17 Red Lion Square with Walter Deverell. He lived there briefly until moving to 14 Chatham Place in November of 1852.  Image: Courtesy of The Victorian Web. 

Rossetti familty moves to Frome, Somerset

In Spring 1853, Frances Rossetti and her daughter, Christina Rossetti, went to Frome, Somerset to start a school, followed by Gabriele Rossetti (Christina's father); however, the school was not successful and the family soon moved back to London.

Death of Gabriele Rossetti

Gabriele Rossetti

Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti (father of Dante Gabriel, Christina Georgina, William Michael and Maria Francesca Rossetti) died on 26 April 1854 at 45 Upper Albany St. (now 166 Albany St.).

Pre-Raphaelite Art Exhibit

Pre-Raphaelite Art Exhibit, Russell Square, London, from 25 May to 25 June 1857. This was the first exhibition devoted solely to the work of the Pre-Raphaelites. Image: Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: albumen print. This photograph, from 7 October 1863, was reproduced as the frontispiece of: Rossetti, William Michael, Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer. London: Cassell and Company, 1898. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, “The Moxon Tennyson as Textual Event: 1857, Wood Engraving, and Visual Culture”

Burial of Elizabeth Siddal

The Rossetti Family Grave, Highgate Western Cemetary

Elizabeth Eleanor Rossetti (formerly Elizabeth Siddal) was buried on 17 February 1862 in Highgate Western Cemetary in the Rossetti family plot. Dante Gabriel Rossetti placed "Dante at Verona," "Love's Nocturne" and other manuscript poems in her coffin before interment. Image: the Rossetti family grave where Elizabeth Siddal is buried (courtesy of The Victorian Web).

Exhumation of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's manuscripts

Manuscript of "Praise and Prayer" exhumed from Elizabeth Siddal's grave

On 10 October 1869, Dante Gabriel Rossetti had the manuscripts that he had previously buried with Elizabeth Siddal exhumed. Image: "Praise and Prayer" manuscript, one of three surviving leaves from the manuscripts Rossetti buried with his wife on 17 February 1862 in Highgate Cemetary. The original is in the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. (MS Eng 769).

Publication of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Ballads and Sonnets

Binding of Ballads and Sonnets (1881)

On 16 September 1881, Dante Gabriel Rossetti published Ballads and Sonnets (London: Ellis and White, 1881) along with a new edition of his Poems. Originally Rossetti intended to publish only one book of his works in 1881, a revised and augmented edition of his 1870 Poems. (On the 1870 volume, see Elizabeth Helsinger, “Lyric Poetry and the Event of Poems, 1870.″) In working over his materials, however, Rossetti soon realized that he had more poems than could be accommodated to a single volume, so he devised the scheme that eventuated in the publication of Ballads and Sonnets and its companion, A New Edition (so identified on the title page) of Poems.  Ballads and Sonnets included an expanded set of poems with the title, "The House of Life," now prefaced with an "Introductory Sonnet" with the first line, "A Sonnet is a moment's monument." Image: courtesy of The Rossetti Archive.

Death of Christina Rossetti

The Rossetti Family Grave, Highgate Western Cemetary

Christina Rossetti died on 29 December 1894 and was buried in the Rossetti family plot, alongside her parents and Elizabeth Siddal.