Maria francesca (1827–76), eldest of the four Rossettis, has come down to posterity unfairly characterized by an anecdote and a remark. For the anecdote Christina Rossetti is responsible although if she had suspected the extent to which it would have shaped future generations' opinion of her sister, she probably would never have originated it. In her “Reading Diary” Time Flies (London, 1885), Christina wrote that Maria “shrank from entering the Mummy Room at the British Museum under a vivid realisation of how the general resurrection might occur even as one stood among those solemn corpses turned into a sight for sightseers” (p. 128).