A review by ceallaighsbooks
Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti

dark mysterious reflective relaxing slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? N/A
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

“Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
‘Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy…’”

— from “The Goblin Market”

TITLE—Goblin Market & other poems
AUTHOR—Christina Rossetti
PUBLISHED—1862
PUBLISHER—Macmillan

GENRE—Pre-Raphaelite English poetry
SETTING—England, 19th c.
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—faeries, temptation & sex, siblinghood, Death, religious imagery & ideology, art & the artist, Keats, big lesbian energy, cottagegore vibes, dreams, nursery rhymes & lullabies, (there’s even a poem about roadkill lmao)

“Rest, rest, for evermore
Upon a mossy shore;
Rest, rest at the heart's core
Till time shall cease:
Sleep that no pain shall wake,
Night that no morn shall break
Till joy shall overtake
Her perfect peace.”

— from “Dream Land”

Summary:
“The pioneering nineteenth-century poet’s best-known and most darkly imaginative verses on love, death and loss.”

My thoughts:
I enjoyed this poetry a lot more than I thought I would. Definitely some excellent erotic, queer vibes and really nice sort of cottagegore, gothic imagery and themes. Also somehow I never realized that Rossetti wrote the poem that my favorite Christmas Carol is based on.

“Awake or sleeping (for I know not which)
I was or was not mazed within a wood
Where every mother-bird brought up her brood
Safe in some leafy niche
Of oak or ash, of cypress or of beech,

“Of silvery aspen trembling delicately,
Of plane or warmer-tinted sycomore,
Of elm that dies in secret from the core,
Of ivy weak and free,
Of pines, of all green lofty things that be.”

— from “An Old-World Thicket”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Season: late Spring / early Summer (except for the Christmas Carol poem which is obviously winter…)

CW // child death (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—
  • THE PRE-RAPHAELITE SISTERHOOD by Jan Marsh—TBR
  • more about Christina Rossetti
  • WB Yeats
  • Mary Shelley
  • Tennyson, Keats, Shakespeare 
  • CARMILLA by Sheridan Le Fanu
  • NETTLE AND BONE by T Kingfisher 
  • “Fiddler, Fool Pair”, in FRUITING BODIES by Kathryn Harlan