The Rossetti household in London was an unusual one (to understate matters), and Christina grew up in a bilingual ambience. Her father, Gabriele, spoke Italian at home while her mother, Frances, spoke English though she was Italian by blood (her own father, Gaetano Polidori, had been secretary to the poet Alfieri and had witnessed the storming of the Bastille). Gabriele was a political exile from his homeland, an eccentric scholar who spent most of his life compiling an unreadable study of Dante and used to wake his children in the morning by crowing like a cock. Christina was the youngest of four, and though her black bombazine exterior might suggest otherwise, she was regarded as a difficult, self willed girl. In contrast to the bohemian lifestyle of her brother Dante Gabriel, she went on to lead a life of domestic Victorian orthodoxy, never married, and in old age regarded suffragettes as rather ungodly. Her single love affair, with the Pre Raphaelite artist James Collinson, foundered on several issues, including religious incompatibility he became a Catholic convert, while Christina was always a devout Anglican. Like Gladstone, she had a strong social and religious conscious towards prostitutes and did much work in the Penitentiary for Fallen Women in Highgate.
Innately sympathetic and intelligent, Christina possessed many fine qualities and won the respect of most of those who knew her; but there is a depressive, neurotically puritanical strain both in her poetry - admirable though it often is - and in her life, and plainly she was the prey of dark inner conflicts and of an overwrought conscience. Jan Marsh suggests that this may have its roots in childhood sexual abuse, though she does not bring forward any cogent proofs for her thesis. Her weighty biography contains new and unfamiliar material and will add to our understanding of a remarkable family and a fascinating, many layered period in British culture.