Christina Rossetti is widely regarded as the most considerable woman poet in England before the twentieth century. No reading of nineteenth century poetry can be complete without attention to this prolific and popular poet. 

Rossetti's inner life dominates her poetry, exploring loss and unattainable hope. Her divine poems have a freshness and toughness of thought, while many of her love poems are erotic, and as often express love for women as for men. 

The varied threads of Rossetti's concerns are drawn together in what is perhaps her greatest poem, the strange and ambiguous Goblin Market.