A Study Guide for Christina Rosetti's "Uphill"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Christina Rosetti's "Uphill," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Sep 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535841986

Book preview

10

Up-Hill

Christina Georgina Rossetti

1861

Introduction

Christina Rossetti composed Up-Hill on June 29, 1858, but the poem was not published until February 1861, when it appeared in Macmillan's Magazine. Rossetti also included Up-Hill in her most critically acclaimed collection of poetry, Goblin Market and Other Poems, published in 1862. Up-Hill is a sixteen-line lyrical poem, written in iambic meter. The poem is a dialogue consisting of a series of questions and answers, which present an extended metaphor on the mortal journey to heaven. Much of Rossetti's poetry incorporates Christian themes, and this is especially true of Up-Hill, in which a doubting and unsure questioner is reassured that after death, she will find her reward in heaven. Up-Hill appeared in The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti, volume 1, published in 1979 and in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1995), a facsimile edition of the 1865 text.

Author Biography

Born in 1830 in London, England, Christina Rossetti was the youngest of four children born to Gabriele Rossetti and Frances Polidori. Rossetti was, perhaps, destined to be a poet. Her father was an Italian poet and Dante scholar, who emigrated from Italy to London in 1824, where he became the chairman of the Department of Italian Studies at King's College. Rossetti was educated at home by her mother, who had been a governess before marriage. Rossetti's early education emphasized religious texts, which her mother often read aloud to the children. In a household where poetry was such an important part of her father's career, it is understandable that reading and writing poetry was an important part of Rossetti's childhood education. She wrote her first poem, "To My Mother on her