7 h 50 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
Two sisters face a goblin market; quiet voices speak of love, loss, and faith held against doubt.
In Poems, Christina Georgina Rossetti brings together musical language and feelings that resist easy answers. Her short lyrics explore love that is absent or unreachable, death met with calm, and small details of nature. Plain words and short lines invite you in, while the feelings beneath them give you reasons to linger.
Goblin Market follows sisters Laura and Lizzie, who live together in a cottage, into a verse fable that warns and enchants. Elsewhere, devotional poems explore faith alongside the pleasures of earth. Love sonnets, songs, hymns, and the nursery rhymes of Sing-Song reveal the range of a poet whose simple forms hold intense feeling.
What you’ll discover
- Sisters and goblins Meet Laura and Lizzie in a long verse fable where enchantment carries a warning.
- Love beyond reach Hear speakers give clear, musical shape to love that is over, absent, or unreachable.
- Faith beside doubt Explore devotional verse that holds religious faith against doubt and the pleasures of earth.
- Small things sharply seen Pause over details of nature, made vivid through plain words and carefully shaped lines.
- The music of simplicity Discover bright rhymes in Sing-Song alongside the measured forms of sonnets, ballads, and hymns.
Who will love it
For readers who love short, musical poems about love, loss, faith and nature, and anyone who wants a way into Victorian poetry.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A quiet life that fed intense poems
- Goblin Market warns and enchants together
- Love, loss and waiting in the lyrics
- Faith pulls against the pleasures of earth
- Sing-Song shows her gift for simplicity
- Sound, form and the habits of her voice
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- Large print hardcover
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Read and hear Gedichte in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Gedichte
by Christina Georgina Rossetti
Two sisters meet a goblin market, while quiet lyrics give voice to love, loss and faith held against doubt.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Christina Rossetti wrote the poems gathered here over nearly fifty years in Victorian London. She was born in 1830 into a gifted Anglo-Italian family, and a first small book of her verses was printed in 1847, when she was still in her teens.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A quiet life that fed intense poems
Christina Rossetti grew up in London in a household full of books, languages and art. Her father, Gabriele Rossetti, was an Italian exile and a poet and scholar. Her brother Dante Gabriel became a painter and poet and a leader of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. Her sister Maria and brother William also wrote. In such a home, making verse felt natural, and she began very young.
Her faith shaped her more than anything else. She belonged to the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England, which was stirred by the Oxford Movement. Prayer, church feasts, sin and judgment were daily matters for her, and they run through her poems. Tradition says she turned down two offers of marriage because of differences in belief. Whatever the full truth, her poems often return to love that is held back by duty or by faith.
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What is Goblin Market about?
It is a poem about two sisters, Laura and Lizzie, and the goblin men who sell tempting fruit. It deals with temptation, longing and the love between sisters, and readers have read it in religious, social and personal ways.
What is Christina Rossetti best known for?
She is best known for Goblin Market and Other Poems of 1862, and for short lyrics such as Remember, Up-Hill, A Birthday and a Christmas poem later sung as a carol. She also wrote Sing-Song, a book of children's rhymes.
Are Christina Rossetti's poems hard to read?
No. Her language is plain and her forms are simple, so most poems are easy to follow. They are short and musical, and the depth lies in the feeling underneath.
The author
Christina Georgina Rossetti
1830–1894 · English poet
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet born in London in 1830. She lived in London and died there in 1894. She wrote poetry for adults and children, as well as religious prose. Her publications include Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862) and Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872).
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