Throughout her life, The Regent's Park was a central location of Christina Rossetti's surroundings. The Rossetti family lived just off The Regent's Park on Upper Albany Street and Christina often walked past the park to her church, Christ Church, Albany Street. She also frequented one of the park's major attractions, the "zoological forest," later known as the London Zoo, and had access to the park's Royal Botanical Society gardens (until 1932, now Queen Mary's Gardens). Later in her life, Rossetti lived less than mile from the park at 30 Torrington Square, while her brother William lived just north of the park on St. Edmund’s Terrace. As for many Londoners, The Regent's Park offered Rossetti an encounter with nature that was often lacking the typical industrial urban environment of the city. Her contemporary William Sharp, in his Papers critical and reminiscent, recalls Rossetti stating: "...my knowledge of what is called nature is that of the town sparrow, or, at most, that of the pigeon which makes an excursion occasionally from its home in Regent’s Park or Kensington Gardens” (70). Rossetti did not need—nor, it seems, did she want, according to Sharp—the peace offered by the nature of the countryside, for, through The Regent's Park and other London gardens, she was able to admire and contemplate the beauty of creation, likely contributing to the ecotheological vision espoused in her poetry and devotional works. 

To read a related blog post, click here: http://blogs.baylor.edu/19crs/2020/01/15/contemplating-ch…is-seek-and-find/

Work Cited 

Sharp, William. "Some reminiscences of Christina Rossetti." Papers critical and reminiscent. Duffield and Company, 1912. HathiTrust Digital Library, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t7hq40s89&view=1up&seq=1.