“I am open to a hope that I am wrong about our poet: time will show.”

Rossetti leaves room for time to correct even a firmly expressed literary judgement · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 18 February 1892

• Poetry
• Time
• Truth

“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

“I am somewhat in a quake, a fresh volume being a formidable upset of nerves,—but at any rate, it cannot turn out twins!”

A new book becomes a comic equivalent of childbirth in this self-deprecating remark · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 28 April 1881

• Art
• Joy
• Poetry