Christina Rossetti in a Tantrum

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

General Description

Date: 1865
Model: Christina Georgina Rossetti

Bibliography

◦ Harrison, The Letters of Christina Rossetti, I. 211.

◦ Surtees, A Catalogue Raisonné, I. 210 (no. 601).

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

CR's tantrum is somewhat surprising since the review of her poetry (quoted by DGR on the drawing) is quite favorable (see “Modern Poets”, The Times, 11 January 1865 12 ). The reviewer was E. S. Dallas, who wrote as follows in comparing CR's verse to Jean Ingelow's: “The poetical art of Miss Rossetti, although her book has as yet not received the same favour from the public, is simpler, firmer and deeper [than Ingelow's work]. Miss Ingelow is but a child of promise—of great promise certainly, but still only of the future. Her work as yet, with all its glow and radiance, is too nebulous, and much of it seems to come of that facility which is a young poet's greatest danger. Miss Rossetti, on the other hand, can point to finished work--to work which it would be difficult to mend. She is not so ambitious in her choice of subject as Miss Ingelow, and perhaps that is one reason why in what she attempts she is more successful.”

DGR wrote an epigram on Dallas in 1870.

Production History

Surtees dates the drawing 1862 and Harrison 1864. But the review quoted by DGR appeared in The Times of 11 January 1865, so the drawing is somewhat later.

Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: s601.raw.xml