Note 12, Chapter 5 of the author's Christina Rossetti in Context which the University of North Carolina Press published in 1988. It appears in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
Battiscombe reinforces the point [that Rossetti's early love poems are based on the experience of literature rather than of life]: "In Sept. 1847 she wrote two poems, Heart's Chill Between and Death's Chill Between ... in which she deals with a tragedy of thwarted love. If ever poems read like a cry from the heart these are they; yet it is all but certain that the sixteen-year-old Christina had never been in love.... These two linked poems should be sufficient warning of the danger of reading an autobiographical meaning into Christina's early poetry" (Christina Rossetti, 42). Also see Bell who makes the same point about "Love Attacked" and "Love Defended" (Christina Rossetti, 219).
Last modified 24 June 2007