Commonplace by Christina Rossetti is one of the books that I bought at the Christian Aid book sale in Edinburgh back in May. I must admit that until then I had thought that Christina only wrote poetry but this slim volume contains five of her short stories, although the first one is quite long at 60 pages. There’s a foreword by Andrew Motion.
I quite enjoyed the novella Commonplace, she was obviously influenced by Jane Austen and the problems that women had then. I think this one is the best.
The second one, called The Lost Titian, is her imagining the loss of a Titian painting.
The last three short stories I found to be too sentimental, maudlin and heavily saturated in Christian teachings – not my sort of thing at all.
I’ll give this book a 3 on Goodreads I think – and that’s me being quite generous.
I also hadn’t realised Christina Rossetti wrote stories as well as poems. I like the sound of the novella, but I don’t think the others would be my sort of thing either.
Helen,
She does seem to have been excessively religious, even for a Victorian, but it was a time of new Christian sects popping up such as the Muscular Christians and the different varieties never seem to be able to get on together, I think that inspired one of the stories.