A settled air of graveward-inclining sadness hangs over the poetry of Christina Rossetti in this New Selected Poems (Carcanet Classics, £12.99; Tablet price £11.69). We glimpse her in studied Victorian photographic portraits, dressed up to the neck in heavy fabrics, wrapped about in her solitariness. She longs, in all this yearning, to be relieved of it all. Her eyes rise in the direction of heaven. Her poems are rhythmically steady, unwavering. Not entirely though. The book begins with a long extract from “Goblin Market”, a dashed off gobbet of breathlessly youthful fantasy, skipping, frantic, near demonic in its flirtations with the idea of, oh my dear, sex.