More on the connection between Rossetti and L.E.L.:

 In his 1904 edited collection of Christina Rossetti's poetry, William Michael Rossetti suggests a possible connection between L.E.L. and Rossetti's poem, Spring which she had published in Goblin Market and Other Poems. It appears that the basis for his speculation lies in the fact that both poems were composed in 1859 and both contemplate the fleeting nature of springtime.

In spite of his suggestion that Spring was actually about Rossetti herself, there is no other evidence that this is the case. By linking his sister to the lonely speaker of Spring who laments that ‘There is no life like spring-life born to die', it would appear that William Michael deliberately inserts Christina into the particular tradition of broken-hearted female singers of whom L.E.L. was a primary forerunner.

In the introduction to his collection, William Michael describes his sister as ‘an almost constant and often a sadly-smitten invalid' who, at times, saw ‘the countenance of Death very close to her own'. It is likely that this image is one designed to appeal to Victorian readers who had an expectation that female poets were forsaken and broken-hearted and that they spoke from a place of deep suffering.

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