“I do not blush to confess that it would afford me some gratification to place my productions before others, and ascertain how far what I do is expressive of mere individualism.”

A frank admission of the wish to test her poems against public judgement · Letter, quoted in Mackenzie Bell's biography

• Art
• Poetry

“I am feeling at 60 very much as I did at 59, though not quite as relieved and exhilarated by the circumstance as when at 30 I gazed in the looking-glass, and discerned no marked change from 29.”

Ageing is treated with humour, perspective and a refusal of melodrama · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 6 December 1890

• Joy
• Mortality
• Time

“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