On this episode of five minutes in church history. Let's talk about a poet

Christina Rosetti. She was born in 1830 and she died in 1894. She was born

into an Italian family in London.

This was a very artistic family.

Two of her brothers were painters,

and she was a poet.

Her father was a poet,

and he taught at King's College. He was a political exile from

Italy and spent his final decades in London and in England and of course Christina Rosetti would spend her entire life in England.

And as she was turning 20 she became engaged but it was broken off when he

converted to Roman Catholicism.

She would remain single the rest of her life.

Since the age of 12, she wrote poetry.

That was 1842. This was the era of Tennyson and Dickens and the

brantes and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This was the era of Victorian literature and into that pantheon is the poet, the Anglican poet Christina Rosetti.

Her first book of poetry was published in 1847.

She was 17 years old.

It was published by her grandfather.

Her first commercially published book of poetry was published the next year in 1848.

It was later in 1862 that her book, The Goblin Market

and other poems was published. That was probably one of her most famous poems in the book that sort of put her on the map, so to speak.

She once wrote, How Beautiful Are the arms which have embraced Christ.

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