Who wrote the Victorian poem 'Goblin Market'?

Christina Rossetti wrote the Victorian narrative poem “Goblin Market.” It was first published in 1862 in her collection Goblin Market and Other Poems, her first commercially printed volume of poetry.

The poem follows sisters Laura and Lizzie, who hear goblin merchants advertising enticing fruit. Laura gives a lock of her hair for a taste and suffers after becoming consumed by her desire for it. Lizzie later confronts the goblins and rescues her sister, making sisterly loyalty and recovery central to the poem’s ending.

Rossetti’s brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelite artist and poet, illustrated the original volume. That family connection causes a frequent mix-up: Dante Gabriel was the illustrator, not the author. Rossetti’s poem has attracted interpretations involving temptation, sexuality, addiction, gender, religion and Victorian commerce, but no single allegorical reading explains every detail. Its irregular rhythms and dense catalogue of fruit also distinguish it formally from a conventional children’s verse tale.