Buy from Us with a Golden Curl (frontispiece to "Goblin Market and other Poems" by Christina Rossetti)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Christina Rossetti’s first book of verse, The Goblin Market, helped establish her as England’s leading female poet. The text concerns sisters tempted by goblins to consume delicious fruit symbolizing illicit desire. Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s illustration captures the moment Laura succumbs and buys the wares offered by a group of animal-headed monsters as Lizzie carries water home in the background. Faulkner, whom the artist favored as an engraver, cut the block, and the bold results pleased Christina.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art