“I am looking through Aunt C.'s journals, and have found a small — very small — proportion of sentences to preserve: amongst these some which it would have been a pity to destroy.”

A glimpse of Rossetti acting as a careful custodian of family memory · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 26 March 1890

• Art
• Memory

“Beyond all possibility of dispute he petted and worshipped our Mother with exuberant fondness.”

A vivid remembrance of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's devotion to their mother · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 6 October 1886

• Love
• Memory

“It has become a different world since last I wrote to you.”

Written after her mother's death, the sentence captures bereavement as a transformation of the whole world · Letter to Lucy Rossetti, 19 April 1886

• Death
• Despair
• Memory

“I hope some day to see the same and a wider field traversed by some friend of older standing and consequently of far warmer affection towards his hero; who, whatever he was or was not, was lovable.”

Her judgement of Gabriel ultimately returns from reputation to affection · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 7 December 1882

• Fame
• Love
• Memory

“I am working away at copying Mamma's contingent of Gabriel's letters — such good old letters some of them, so loving — and some so funny. It is a sad task, though one I like to perform.”

Preserving family letters becomes both an act of love and an encounter with grief · Letter to Lucy Rossetti, autumn 1882

• Death
• Love
• Memory

“I write because I cannot but write, for you are continually in my thoughts and always in my heart.”

A direct expression of the profound attachment she felt towards her brother · Letter to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 2 December 1881

• Love
• Memory

“The delightful life at Kelmscott ought not soon to slip from my memory, nor ought I soon to forget whose kindness provided me with so many pleasures.”

Gratitude and memory are closely joined in her recollection of Kelmscott · Letter to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, July 1873

• Friendship
• Joy
• Memory

“Still I cannot endure the idea that I may be losing some possible communications through neglect.”

Her anxiety about correspondence reveals the importance she placed on connection · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, August 1849

• Friendship
• Memory

“The postman's knock this morning made evident a most humiliating state of my own mind.”

A candid admission of how strongly expectation could govern her feelings · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 23 November 1848

• Memory
• Truth

“Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember me and be sad.”

This wording is widely circulated as a Rossetti quotation but is also associated with her poem Remember · Letter, commonly attributed

• Love
• Memory
• Sadness