Christina Rossetti's poem Goblin Market is one of her best known. Although it is ostensibly about two sisters' misadventures with goblins, critics have interpreted the piece in a variety of ways, seeing it as an allegory about temptation and salvation, a commentary on Victorian gender roles and female agency, and a work about erotic desire and social redemption.

Christina Georgina Rossetti, born on December 5, 1830, was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems. We begin today with a selection of devotional poems, then turn our attentions toward other topics—love, jealousy, and the burgeoning world of Victorian society.

A widowed man with a son and a daughter (she is known as Maiden Bright-Eye) marries a cruel woman with a daughter of her own who cannot equal Maiden Bright-Eye in any way. After Maiden Bright-Eye is rewarded for her kindness and her stepsister punished for her cruelty, the king decides to marry Maiden Bright-Eye. Will Maiden Bright-Eye get her happily ever after, or will her cruel stepsister?