Choosing to remain single, she led a relatively restricted life devoted to poetry, religion, and companionship with her mother and aunts. As her family’s financial situation worsened and her health deteriorated, Rossetti grew more devoutly religious. Rossetti’s early poetry-influenced by Romantic literature as well as her own ill health-focused on themes of love and death. Although not an official member, Rossetti collaborated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, contributing poetry to their journal, The Germ, under the pen name Ellen Alleyn, and modelling for their paintings. All three of her siblings were writers, and her brother, Dante Gabriel, helped found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, one of the most influential artistic movements of the Victorian period. The Rossetti household was intensely creative and artistic. Like many young women in her position, Rossetti prepared to become a governess (one of the few “respectable” occupations for women at the time), but poor health prevented her from teaching. Despite the family’s literary connections, they were relatively poor. Rossetti was educated at home by her mother, Frances, who was devoutly religious and influenced her daughter’s lifelong devotion to the Anglican faith. Her father was a political exile, poet, and translator, and her maternal uncle, John Polidori, was a writer and physician to the famous Romantic poet Lord Byron. Christina Georgina Rossetti was born into an artistic, well-educated Italian-English family.
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