Despite new historical study of her contexts, Christina Rossetti
continues to haunt the reader as a displaced subjectivity emptied of
history. Through an analysis of the posthumous in her work, the
construction of 'Christina Rossetti' by her brothers, and the history of
reception, this study asks how 'speaking with the dead' can avoid
critical ventriloquy. The figure of the mother is offered as a paradigm
for theorising a new reading that refuses to exorcise the ghost of
'Christina Rossetti'.