During her childhood years, Christina Rossetti was surrounded by literature and religion in her highly artistic family. Her father was a poet and her mother was a devoted Anglican woman. From the both of them, Christina Rossetti learned to love their same passions. Being home schooled, Christina Rossetti spent numerous hours in the family library. She gravitated towards Gothic romances, the writing of Sir Walter Scott, poetry by John Keats, and the works of Dante. By the age of twelve, Christina Rossetti had her first poems published by her grandfather’s private press in 1842. She later used the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne in 1850 when she became published by her brother in the journal The Germ. She is associated with the Pre-Raphaelite literary
