Rossetti was born in London in 1830 into a remarkable family of artists scholars and writers Her father was an exiled Italian revolutionary and poet and her brothers William and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were founding members of art movement the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood Christina had her own first book of poetry privately printed by her grandfather when she was 12 years old At the age of 19 she contributed poems to Pre Raphaelite journal The Germ under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyn Rossetti then died in 1894 The women in her family were committed High Church Anglicans and as a teenager Christina suffered a nervous breakdown that was diagnosed at the time as religious mania Rossetti fell in love with several suitors but rejected them all because they failed to share her precise religious convictions Rossetti rejecting several men is portrayed in her poem No Thank You John in 1859 and after reading it one would find it impossible to forget the message of tactful rejection In this poem the speaker rejects the offering of love from the persistent John Her work speaks to the idea of unrequited love The speaker contends that she never told John that she loved him and that he knew she never loved him As the poem progresses Rossetti s speaker moves from a simple refusal by incorporating a beautiful verse with tactfully rude remarks In 1862 at the age of 32 she published her first full collection Goblin Market and Other Poems
