220. Christina Rossetti — Speaking Likenesses with Ayana Christie

KIM ASKEW: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off forgotten women writers. I’m Kim Askew, here with my co-host Amy Helmes.

AMY HELMES: Hey, everyone! Today, we’re talking about Christina Rossetti — who admittedly isn’t a “lost” writer.

KIM: Yes, most people know her for her poetry, especially the poem “Goblin Market.” 

AMY: “For there is no friend like a sister/in calm or stormy weather/To cheer one on the tedious way/To fetch one if one goes astray…” It’s one of my favorite poems!

KIM: Me too. But today we’ll be talking about one of Rossetti’s lesser-known works — a children’s book called Speaking Likenesses. It’s often compared to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was published nine years prior. This work of Rossetti’s has its own unique spin, but before we dive in, I have to share this cute story—my daughter, who just started kindergarten, recently went on her very first field trip to see a theatrical production of Alice. She was gobsmacked! She’s been running around the house quoting Alice and the Queen of Hearts, “Off with her head!”—you can imagine what that’s been like!

AMY: Ha-ha, echoing throughout your house constantly. That’s adorable! I remember saying that line to Julia when she was about three and her responding: “No! I want my head on me!” (We would also sing “We’re painting the roses red” any time we would pass by a rose bush. So I think it's one of those stories that really never goes out of style. And in particular, it really appeals to little girls. Every generation gets to discover its charm. 

KIM: Absolutely! And I have to say, it’s kind of fun hearing those lines, even if they’re repeated a hundred times a day. But like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, the three heroines of Rossetti’s book embark on their own wild journeys — ones that are a bit more moralistic — and maybe a bit more clear-eyed about the realities women and girls face in the world.

AMY: That’s right. But before we get too far down that rabbit hole, let’s raid the stacks and get started!

[intro music plays]

KIM: Joining us today is Ayana Christie, Chief Product Officer at Bond & Grace, a women-owned publishing company that reimagines classic literature for the modern reader. Their signature is The Art Novel, which is made up of a classic story, annotations from a team of scholars, and bespoke fine art inspired by the narrative. This immersive reading experience is one of a kind. Previous titles include Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and they’ve recently published a new edition of Alice in Wonderland, which we’ll discuss later. Welcome to the podcast, Ayana!

AYANA CHRISTIE:  Thank you so much. I am thrilled to be here. I love what you all have going on, bringing fascinating figures to light in a way that gives them agency. It's all my type of party. 

AMY: And the Bond and Grace Instagram account, that's my kind of place to be also,  I just want to live in it. it's So pretty! Anyway, we all know Alice in Wonderland, but few people know Christina Rossetti’s Speaking Likenesses, which one could almost read as an homage-slash-answer to Alice in Wonderland. It was published in 1874. Ayana, why don’t you kick things off by describing the framework of this book? 

AYANA: Yes, I'd be happy to. So Speaking Likenesses is structured as a collection of three short stories about three young girls. They're all told by an aunt to her nieces. It's similar to the way that Charles Dodgson (a. k. a. Lewis Carroll) created his Alice stories for the three Liddell sisters. And in Rossetti's case, the aunt keeps her nieces occupied with the task that they have at hand while she's telling the story, which definitely brings out that Victorian sense of woman's work and responsibility that's woven through her tales. Very different to how Carroll purports the idea of play and this story concept with the Liddell sisters. So each story has its own fairy-tale setting and real lessons, as well, behind them. 

AMY: Yeah, it's interesting because these little girls are not just allowed to sit and relax and listen to the story, right? They have to stay busy. They have to be hemming pocket handkerchiefs or darning stockings while they're listening, and at one point, the aunt says, “All eyes on your occupations, not on me, lest I should feel shy. Now I start my knitting and my story together.” So even the aunt, while she's telling the story, she has to be working, right? It's this focus on women's work that I think is very intentional by Rossetti, and I think it's key in understanding these three tales that she's going to tell. 

KIM: Yeah, that’s right, Amy, because unlike in Alice where the rules are constantly shifting (or non-existent) at times, Speaking Likenesses shows a world where the characters have to learn how to navigate within those rules. It’s about growth through understanding responsibility. There’s also a lot of interruption by the little girls as the aunt tells her stories. (It’s a bit like The Princess Bride in that sense, where the girls are like, “Wait, wait, wait.” The aunt then gently corrects or shushes them to continue her story.) Ayana, do you want to give a quick rundown of the three different moral fables, which are wrapped in fairy-tale settings?

AYANA: Yes, “moral fables” is a great way to put it. Um, I'm going to try. So each story follows a young girl that's embarked on some kind of journey or something that's causing a challenge for them, which then results in this moral lesson. So first we have Flora, who expects her birthday to be perfect, but she encounters all these disappointments that test her behavior and test her ability to show up as her “best self,” if you will, with her friends and family. And then the second story features Edith, who is attempting to light a fire for a kettle that she just like whisked away into the forest. But she encounters these spirited animals who contribute their ideas about how she can light the kettle, and they're trying to be helpful, but it doesn't seem like it really pans out. And her lesson is patience and resourcefulness, I think. And then lastly, we have Maggie, who’s sent on a mission to deliver some Christmas gifts that were left in her grandmother's shop to a doctor's home. And she sets out eagerly, but soon slips and falls and kind of falls into this very dreamlike state, which reminded me a lot of Alice. She bumps her head and then, um, similar to the other stories, she's met with strange children and talking animals and is tempted to stop and play and get redirected from her mission, but she stays on the mission because she made a promise. 

AMY: Okay, thank you. It's hard to sum up these very, very weird stories succinctly. 

KIM: Yes. Yes, you did a great job.

AMY: Before we go deeper into these stories, let’s talk a little bit about Christina Rossetti’s life and where Speaking Likenesses fits into her body of work. She was born in London in 1830, the youngest of four children in a remarkably talented family. Her father was an Italian exile, a poet, and a Dante scholar, and her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, became a famous painter and poet; he was a central figure in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

KIM: Christina is often overshadowed by her brother in terms of fame, but she was an incredibly important poet in her own right. Her poetry is filled with themes of spirituality, personal sacrifice, and moral instruction — largely influenced by her deep religious faith. She grew up in an intellectually vibrant household, surrounded by the influence of her Italian father, who was frequently visited by other Italian intellectuals. Both of her parents were deeply involved in her education, fostering a love for literature early on. From a young age, she was captivated by writers like Dante, Tennyson, and Keats and their works no doubt influenced her poetic voice. However, her teenage years were marked by bouts of illness and depression, which were emotionally and socially isolating. This period deepened her religious convictions and heightened her sensitivity to themes of mortality and inner struggle—experiences that profoundly shaped her writing and added emotional intensity to her work.

AMY: Now Christina Rossetti  never married, despite having at least two serious proposals, apparently because they didn’t share her strict Anglican beliefs. Jan Marsh’s 1994 biography on Rossetti also speculates that Rossetti might have been a victim of sexual assault as a teenager, possibly perpetrated by her father. There’s no direct evidence supporting this, and we don’t have time to explore that fully in this episode, but it’s an interesting theory to consider while reading her most famous poem, “Goblin Market,” published in 1862. “Goblin Market” was actually written for children, which is interesting because it doesn’t seem very appropriate for children in some respects, but it has these dark layers of complexity that make it equally engaging for adults. 

KIM: Amy, that’s actually a great lead-in to Speaking Likenesses, which was published in 1874, after Goblin Market but before her later collection A Pageant and Other Poems. Unlike the “anything goes” rule-breaking of Alice in Wonderland, Rossetti’s book is grounded in Victorian ideals of morality, personal growth, and responsibility. And speaking of Alice, Rossetti and Lewis Carroll actually knew each other, didn’t they, Ayana?

AYANA:  Yes they did. They met in 1867 [correction: 1862], I believe, at her family home, and Carroll greatly admired her work, apparently, and people assume they exchange their writings and their poetry. He even photographed her and her family, and some of those images are still displayed at the National Gallery of London now. And Carroll referenced Rossetti's poem, “Goblin Market,” in his journals, and it said that they maintained a cordial friendship over the years. Do you guys know anything about them possibly having a dating relationship at some point?  

AMY: Mmm, I don't know. I don't think so because I feel like Lewis Carroll's maybe seen as gay… I have that idea in my head; I'm not sure. But then he's also taking pictures of the little girls. So…

AYANA; Yeah, there definitely is a lot more to explore about his kind of  fascinations with girlhood and womanhood. And we know that he never had an official relationship, but it's one of the things that we ended up exploring in Alice in Wonderland in our version of the book. And so I was just curious, because there were some things online that I saw that there was speculation about whether or not they had a courtship. 

KIM: Oh, that's so interesting. I didn't know. 

AMY: Yeah, I read that Jan Marsh biography, and I feel like if they had had a little something going on, I feel like that would have stood out to me from reading her book. Now, it was years ago, so perhaps I just forgot, but I don't remember that being a thing in reading her biography. 

KIM: Yeah, so she did write a glowing review of Alice in Wonderland in 1866, praising its wit and creativity! But she also subtly noted its lack of a strong moral message.

AMY: I wonder if Speaking Likenesses could be seen as her response to Alice. I mean, it really seems so, right, Ayana?

AYANA: I think so. She acknowledges that the Alice books were an inspiration in her letter to her brother Dante Gabriel. And she also wrote a positive review of Alice in Wonderland in 1866, and she even goes as far as  referring to her own work as merely a Christmas trifle in comparison to Alice in Wonderland. So it's possible that she saw it as a sequel, if you will. Um, however, we know that Rossetti aimed to infuse her stories with clear moral lessons, perhaps addressing what she saw as gaps in the market around stories that actually teach girls how to be, and Speaking Likenesses offers that very structured character-building type of narrative. That is just less obvious in the Alice story. It's like, it's really easy to get wrapped up in the details, if you will, of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and miss whether or not there is more to learn there, both as a child, as an adult. So I think she wanted something that was maybe a little bit more obvious. 

KIM: So there’s an excerpt from Speaking Likenesses that I think shows some of the connection to Alice that we’re talking about. Amy, you're so great at reading. Maybe you can read it. It's from that first story. It's the one that seems the most Alice-like of the three. And just a reminder to everyone, that's the one with the eight-year-old Flora that Ayana had told us about. She's being a bit of a brat on her eighth birthday. 

AMY: [reads passage]

I just want  to say [sings] “Be our guest! Be our guest!” You know, it just reminds me of that scene from Beauty and the Beast.

KIM: Oh, yes, but also, I mean, hello with the Alice references or elements. I mean, this is like a grocery list full of things that make you think of Alice in Wonderland, right? 

AMY: Right. The tunnel of yew trees is like the rabbit hole, right? We've got the door, with the signage  saying, “Ring please,” or whatever. 

KIM: Multiple looking glasses.

AMY: There's even a queen, like a tyrannical queen, ruling over this feast, right?  The comparisons are pretty endless. it's not subtle and I think readers would instantly know the reference. 

KIM: Absolutely. Yeah, it's not subtle at all. Um, and then also I should say I have a cheap printed version, a copy of the original 1874 edition. And the Flora from the book looks very similar to Alice. The illustrations are actually by Arthur Hughes. He was a painter and illustrator, and he was also friends with Lewis Carroll, too. So I think that's another interesting connection. 

AMY: And also, I don't think it’s necessarily in that passage I just read, but as the story continues it gets very unsettling and in the same way that Alice in Wonderland gets unsettling, like, disturbing, right? I mean, there's a scary game with children called “Hunt the Pincushion,” where Flora is the pincushion, and it  reads like an assault — like a violent assault on her. 

KIM: Yep.

AMY: And there's also a lot, especially in this story, just a lot of imagery of fruit, which reminded me of “Goblin Market.” 

KIM: Yeah. And the symbolism of fruit and what it means. Yeah, completely.  . 

AMY: So we talked about the similarities, but let's talk about the differences, because  what Rossetti is doing is much different than what Lewis Carroll's doing with his story. There's a much stronger moralistic tone. So basically, by the end of the tale, which is really wild and crazy,  Flora learns her lesson. You know, she learns that you can't be bratty, especially on your birthday. You have to be a sweet, mild-mannered girl. And here's what the narrator aunt says:  And I think if she lives to be nine years old and given another birthday party, she is likely on that occasion to be even less like the birthday Queen of her troubled dream than was the Flora of eight years old: who, with dear friends and playmates and pretty presents, yet scarcely knew how to bear a few trifling disappointments, or learn to be obliging and good-humoured under slight annoyances.”

You can really feel the weight of the lesson, which is “be a good girl,” you know? And it's kind of hard  in 2024 to read that and think, “No! I don't want that to be the lesson!” I don't want Flora to have to be a good girl. It doesn't feel very feminist in this day and age, I guess. What are your thoughts, Ayana?

AYANA: Yeah, I agree with that.. certainly, our understanding of the relation of time, what has happened since this period taints the way we're able to read Rossetti's writings here. And another thing here that she gives us in her finger-waving to Flora is Flora is having this outburst at her eighth birthday. And Alice is seven-and-a-half in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. So she's also giving us another clue that this is like another way that Alice could evolve to be a different type of girl who doesn't talk back to the queen, who doesn't, you know, uh, offer her own autonomy to the animals, et cetera. Um, and I also think that there's a very clear highlight of the didactic language that Rossetti likes to use in her work. A major contrast to the more nonsense literature that makes up Lewis Carroll's whole canonical contribution to our understanding of children's literature. And in Alice, the messages are more implicit. They're like wrapped in humor. They're more surreal situations. The story kind of invites readers to interpret and maybe even defy this concept of, whereas Rossetti seems to be using logic as a holy grail. Like it's her failsafe. It's the thing that anchors her. And it's the same kind of Victorian lessons that we see anchoring Alice from time to time, but she chooses to defy them. 

KIM: Yeah, yeah. And it actually reminds me of Rossetti’s own struggles with her temperament. She was known for having a fiery temper as a child—there’s even a story about her cutting her arm with scissors after being scolded by her mother! But later in life, she became much more restrained, maybe even too restrained. 

AMY: Yeah, her brother William said she had stifled her natural high spirits.  There's always this theme of learning to subdue your own temperamental nature and desires. And I'm, you know, thinking back, of course, to her mental health battles as a teen. Um, but it does seem like maybe Christina Rossetti started off as a child, more like Lewis Carroll's Alice, and then as she's writing this as a woman, um… it's, it's hard for me because I keep wanting to put  in her mindset, like, feminist ideas that I don't think she actually had, you know? Because I want to say that her point of view is like,  “As girls, we're not afforded the luxury of being able to be like this.” This, on the other hand, this more structured, rule-abiding way of being is what we have to be. You know, we're forced by society to be that way. But I think I'm putting that on Rossetti, and I don't think that's actually what she intended. I think she really did believe that this was the path for girls. This was the righteous and moral path for girls. I don't know. What are your guys's thoughts on that? 

AYANA: Yeah, I think it was a coping mechanism. I think she's really clearly telling us like there's a way to deal with these trifling disappointments of life and your best path forward is to be polite and to be graceful because you can't do anything about the fact that life is going to disappoint you and maybe that's some of her own personal strife coming through with her writing career and things that she wanted for herself. Think about her being a woman writer in the shadow of a Lewis Carroll, trying to break through what some of those emotions might be that are coming through in her writing. And we see that even now in modern writers, when they create a children's novel, They want to pass down a lesson that they are really  holding close to heart. 

KIM: It reminded me, too, of the conversation between Marmee and Jo in Little Women. We talked about that in a previous episode. But, um, you know, Marmee talking about how she had a temper, and she's angry every day, but she has to learn how to control it. And she wants to teach Jo how to control her temper, as well, so that she can survive in this world, basically, that they live in. 

AMY: Yeah, and that's basically the same time period as this would have been written. Um, and it's taking me back to, okay, so this idea of domestic labor that we've said runs throughout all three stories with the outer framework, but this second story in particular, where little Edith is tasked with lighting a fire to heat a tea kettle. That's all about domestic labor, right?   She needs to get this tea kettle going before the rest of the family comes out for a little picnic in the woods. um, so while she's, you know, frustrated trying to get this fire to light, she sees a cluster of grapes, hanging from a high branch overhead. I think this little section says a lot, so I wanted to see if you would read that passage, Ayana. 

AYANA: Yes. Happy to:  How she longed for a cluster of those purple grapes which, hanging high above her head, swung to and fro with every breath of wind; now straining a tendril, now displacing a leaf, now dipping towards her but never within reach. Still, as Edith was a very wise girl, we must not suppose she would stand long agape after unattainable grapes: nor did she. Her business just then was to boil a kettle, and to this she bent her mind.

AMY: So yeah, the fact that she doesn't have the luxury of dreaming for something unattainable or something beyond domestic work, you know. This is what her mind has to focus on And we see that in the first story too, of not being able to partake of any of the sweets at the table. The strawberries and cream, they're snatched away from her just as she's about to take a bite. So there's this idea that girls just aren't allowed to have it.  

AYANA: I’m also thinking of  fear, right? The fear behind what if I go off the path and indulge my imagination or indulge this other part of me that I don't actually know how to manage that wants to try new things. Her inability to even think What's the worst that will happen? is also something that struck me about this particular passage and all the stories. Like, what if you kind of stop and play and don't deliver the package directly? Who is going to tell? 

KIM: Exactly. It's a perfect lead into the third story because it's like a classic take on the little Red Riding Hood fairytale. But it also has that sense of like, you have to do the right thing and you don't have any other option. I mean, in this case, yeah, we'll talk about it more, but things can go very wrong if you don't follow the rules. 

AMY: Right, in this one the heroine, Maggie, travels through a forest to return some items to a rich family. She’s then visited by otherworldly spirit children who tempt her and try to divert her from her task. She’s given a rude welcome when she finally arrives at her destination, but as a result of keeping her promise, she is rewarded on her return journey home.

KIM: Let’s face it, she actually lives. I mean, she gets a concussion and the spirit world is coming to her. She could die of freezing cold if she doesn't do what she's supposed to do. I mean, what I took the symbolism to be saying. So scary. 

AMY: My example of how I keep putting my own modern framework into these tales… again, I don't think Rossetti intended this at all, but when I read this story, so it's set around Christmas time, right? She's doing all this work. I mean, it's hard work. And then she's passing along the way in the forest all this really fun stuff. And she's like, nope, I can’t stop and play the game with these fairy children or whatever. I gotta keep going. No, I can't enjoy this. I gotta keep going. And it made me think about  all the work that women do at Christmastime and all that, you actually really cannot enjoy at Christmastime and I, like, I, clearly have, like, a problem that I'm placing all of my anxieties about Christmas onto this one story, but that was my takeaway from it. Like, “Oh, yep, that sounds about right at Christmastime: Sending a girl on an errand and then she misses out on all the fun.” 

KIM: But she does get rewarded with some puppies. 

AMY: That's true. That's true.  

KIM: Yeah, And she doesn't die!  

AMY: Well, the one thing that really stands out in this story, too, is the appearance of this little boy who is described as “all mouth and  teeth.” It's like a distorted face with a giant mouth And these, like, you know, ferocious teeth. 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: He's probably the thing that stands out to me the most in that story, just because he's so creepy. 

KIM: Oh, yeah. He's so creepy, that imagery, yeah.

AMY: Listeners, I will say that in next week's bonus episode, I'm going to be reading this third tale in full for everyone. It is very Christmas-y. So stay tuned for that.  But getting back to the, um, comparisons between this book and Alice in Wonderland, there's a point in Flora's tale where glass bricks are being built around her to make up like a house that's being built around her. She's being confined, right? And, by contrast, in Alice in Wonderland, it's Alice who's busting out of the house, right? 

KIM: Yes. 

AMY: Getting bigger and she's breaking the walls and coming out of it. And it's sort of like the opposite is happening in this tale where she's getting trapped in. Um, so yeah, in Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, there are no clear rules to follow. There's no being a “good girl” necessarily. There's a playful defiance of logic and of Alice's behavior, frankly, that reflects how disorienting it can be to grow up. It's a metaphor for adolescence and puberty, but in Rossetti's work, it's the complete opposite. 

KIM: Yeah, as we said, it's basically learning how to navigate these norms and it's kind of embracing personal growth. It's funny, one of the games is called “Self Help;” it made me laugh. Um, but Alice, on the other hand, she's getting to break free from those strictures entirely.

AMY: Yeah, Ayana, what do you think modern readers can take away from this contrast between the sort of playful rebellion that we see in Alice and then all the lessons that are so overt in Speaking Likenesses? 

AYANA: Yeah, I think Rossetti offers us a lesson about navigating the confines of acceptable behavior. And we as adults, like in this new 2024 world (maybe not so new sometimes, right?) can think about how we ourselves are  subjected to this concept of “acceptable behavior” and maybe how we're projecting that onto young people around us, the children around us, the girls around us. We have a centerfold essay in our version of Alice in Wonderland that talks about this, like how there's an intertangling with identity and what's acceptable, what's beautiful, what is within the confines of our understanding of the ideal girl, and some of the ways that you know, it's time for us to break what that actually is and give children freedom to explore these different parts of them as human. And so I think when we look at Alice, it's a really interesting way to think about how children could be cultivated differently and or you could cultivate yourself differently and thinking about what are the confines, what's the glass house that you found yourself in that you want to break out of and be a little bit more like Alice?

KIM: I love that.

AMY: Yeah, it feels like there's a reason maybe that Alice endured  and Speaking Likenesses did not endure. And I think part of it is that Alice as a character, she does defy the norms of what a little girl is supposed to be and that's, I think, going back to our daughters and how they were captivated by Alice in Wonderland… as a little girl you read that and you're like, “Yeah, she's kind of a smart mouth and talking back to all these crazy characters.” I'd rather read that story than Christina  Rossetti's admonishing me to walk the straight and narrow path, you know? 

AYANA: Yeah, and there's something to be said about, you know, Rossetti is also confined to her time, right? And so I can imagine that her novel or her work didn't reach the same acclaim because it was kind of restating the obvious. It's restating things that people were already experiencing. And then, you know, we can also talk about Lewis Carroll as a male writer talking about girlhood and the weirdness around that. And like, why does he get famous and her and not her? Like I like to say, the ideology is all in the water and it's hard to escape it, especially when you're a creator, um, with this type of talent. You know, I can see how she found herself in a bit of a box and and it. felt comfortable there. 

AMY: Yeah. I mean, there were so many morality tales for children that were similar to the ones she wrote here. Um, but I do like to think even though, like I said, I'm putting my own modern sensibility on it, I do like to think maybe there was a part of her as she was writing it that kind of  was writing it a little tongue-in-cheek, with a little bit of shade, like: this is girls’ lot, you know, this is our lot.

KIM: I want to think that too. Yeah. I love that. I want to hear more about your… you said a little bit about the Alice in Wonderland.  Let's tell the listeners more about your Alice in Wonderland edition.

AYANA: Yes, of course. I'd love to. Um, so our latest release   includes the full original texts of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, as well as Through the Looking Glass. And the reason why I bring that up first is I love that we actually give you the full story of Alice, her evolution, if you will. In the first story, she's more timid. She's kind of going crazy in a topsy-turvy world and growing in size, shrinking in size. And we see her come into more of her womanhood and to this, like, more of an adolescent stage by the time she gets through looking glass. And throughout that journey, we have paired the text with new contemporary, fine art. As well as commentary from a global team of scholars. So they give you more information about Lewis Carroll, his influences, things that were happening at the time that would influence why a particular passage is important. These stories are layered with references to the British empire, references to their growing stake at that particular time and people's changes and eating habits. That's why there’s so much sugar references in the book. Like just so many interesting references that we learned from our stores are all baked in here.

KIM: That's fascinating. How cool. Oh, I'm so excited to read it.

AMY: I love that, because even still, when I read Alice in Wonderland, I think of it as just a lot of, like, fun nonsense, right? I think I miss a lot. There actually is a lot of, like, targeted meaning in there and symbolism.  I would love the idea of having expert annotations along with the reading. And I don't know if you have this yet for Alice, but I just realized you had it for some of your other titles. Like the “expansion pack,” where it's like, um, cards. Am I right?

AYANA: Oh, yes. Oh my gosh thank your for bringing that up! Those are one of my favorite products that I created this year for the company. And so what they are, are “Companion Cards.” So you don't need our version of Alice in Wonderland or Frankenstein or The Secret Garden to use these cards. What we've done is packaged most of the annotations, and most of the art from our books into this compact companion card experience. And you can use the card to read any version of those books and just read them in a different way. Um, and we learned that from our book club community, the community of folks who just love the idea of having access to the research that we've done  from our team of scholars and access to the visuals of the art. 

AMY: It's such a good idea, and I don't think I've ever seen it done in quite that way, you know? Like, people usually reach for a book to read another book, so this is different.

AYANA: I love it. It's something that came together… we were trying to think of, actually, we started off with thinking about doing like playing cards to go with Alice in Wonderland just as a, you know, nice lifestyle home concept. And I was like, well, actually, I think we have something here.  Everything we do, we try to make sure that the book lover is at the center and giving them something different. There’s not in the market, there's not enough things out there like book accessories and experiences that are for people who actually read. 

KIM: Love it.

AMY: The first time I read Alice in Wonderland, I was in second grade, and I grabbed it off the shelf at the school library because the cover was so beautiful. It had, like, the gilt edges of the pages and the cover itself was just like, so colorful and gorgeous, and that's my reason for choosing the book and then of course, I got drawn in and I loved the story. And you don't forget books that are beautiful and special, and the Bond & Grace books are just that. The books you guys are producing are exquisitely beautiful and so special and they would make such a terrific Christmas or holiday gift for the book lover in your life. I mean, they're keepsakes; they're heirlooms, really.  

AYANA: Thank you so much. We have an incredible team that has worked so hard on the design, the curation, the writing. I mean, I couldn’t be happier with how our books have turned out and we do design them so that there's something that draws you from across the room. 

AMY: Thank you so much for joining us today to discuss Christina Rossetti.  This has been such a super interesting discussion, and we're glad we got that opportunity to dive into a different work by Rossetti that we wouldn't have thought to read. 

AYANA: Yes. Thank you so much, Amy and Kim for having me. I really appreciate being here. Always excited to talk about books anytime you've got another one up your sleeve. 

AMY: Do you happen to know what the next book will be after Alice? 

AYANA: Okay, I will drop a hint. We do like to keep people waiting and baited to know what book we're doing. So I'll drop a hint. We are coming back to the USA. We're going to do an American author.

KIM: Ooh, I can't wait!

AYANA: It’s a good one. For the anniversary of the book.

AMY: Okay. I'll get to thinking on that. But, like I said, if you start following Bond & Grace on Instagram, their beautiful Instagram site, you'll eventually get the answer, right? 

AYANA: Yes, exactly. 

AMY: So that’s all for today. In next week’s bonus episode, it’s story time! I’ll actually be reading the entire third story from Christina Rossetti’s Speaking Likenesses. It’s very Christmas-y, so it feels appropriate to kick off the month of December. Get that episode by subscribing wherever you listen, or visit our Patreon page. Patreon also now sells all of our bonus episodes individually if you can’t commit to a monthly subscription. So feel free to pick and choose if that’s your preference!

KIM: And in two weeks, we’ll be back with another full-length episode, this time discussing the late nineteenth and early 20th century writer Zitkála-Šá, a member of the Yankton Dakota Sioux tribe whose writing explores the mistreatment of Native Americans and her own feelings of conflicted identity.

AMY: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew!