In an unprecedented comparison of two of the most important female authors of the nineteenth century, Azelina Flint foregrounds the influence of the religious communities that shaped Louisa May Alcott’s and Christina Rossetti’s visions of female creativity. In the early stages of the authors’ careers, their artistic developments were associated with their patrilineal connections to two artistic movements that shaped the course of American and British history: the Transcendentalists and Pre-Raphaelites. Flint uncovers the authors’ rejections of the individualistic outlooks of these movements, demonstrating that Alcott and Rossetti affiliated themselves with their mothers and sisters’ religious faith. Applying the methodological framework of women’s mysticism, Flint reveals that Alcott’s and Rossetti’s religious beliefs were shaped by the devotional practices and life-writing texts of their matrilineal communities. Here, the authors’ iconic portrayals of female artists are examined in light of the examples of their mothers and sisters for the first time. Flint recovers a number of unpublished life-writings, including commonplace albums and juvenile newspapers, introducing readers to early versions of the authors’ iconic works. These recovered texts indicate that Alcott and Rossetti portrayed the female artist as a mouthpiece for a wider community of women committed to social justice and divine communion. By drawing attention to the parallels in the authors’ familial affiliations and religious beliefs, Flint recuperates a tradition of nineteenth-century women’s mysticism that departs from the individualistic models of male literary traditions to locate female empowerment in gynocentric relationships dedicated to achieving a shared revelation of God.

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'.

This builds on the reinterpretations of Rossetti that have emerged in the last 20 years, showing her as a persistent critic of her culture, as well as one who explored language, sexuality and feminine identity.