Christina Rossetti's engagement with Christian theology continues to fascinate literary scholars. Excellent work on this subject has appeared in the last several decades, including Diane D'Amico's superb Christina Rossetti: Faith, Gender, and Time (CH, May'00, 37-4952) and Lynda Palazzo's Christina Rossetti's Feminist Theology (CH, Jan'03, 40-2659), but Ludlow (Anglia Ruskin Univ., UK) proves there is substantially more to be said on this subject. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

R. D. Morrison, Morehead State University, CHOICE

By means of scrupulous and admirable research, Ludlow places Rossetti in a long tradition of religious thinkers who seek to make sacred devotion an intimately human practice ... Her book is a goldmine for scholars who seek deep knowledge of Rossetti and the Bible ... Ludlow's remarkable biblical knowledge, for its part, allows her to uncover fresh meaning in both Rossetti's language and her structure. It is a rare pleasure to find criticism that pays such close attention to the matter of words and their arrangement, and even more of a pleasure to see the degree to which that attention pays off.

Times Literary Supplement

A sophisticated, well-read, and theologically attuned account of Rossetti's assimilation of the Bible and devotional writing.

Jane Stabler, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900

Ludlow's almost encyclopaedic mastery of the theological and religious intricacies at play, as well as her ability to trace their historical development and their connections to literature, set the book apart from other studies of its kind: not merely providing a contextual framework for understanding the theological basis of Rossetti's own works, this study illuminates the longer traditions which are themselves at the root of Victorian theological debates, and of the literature shaped by these in turn … this project offers a necessary correction to recent trends in scholarship that represent Rossetti's approach as 'startlingly modern' … her project's significance as a contribution to the study of Rossetti's writing and its theological contexts becomes apparent through the many excellent close readings and analyses performed in this book.

Heather McAlpine, University of the Fraser Valley, Journal of Victorian Culture