Lizzie Siddal Face of the Pre-raphaelites

"Even those who do not know Lizzie Siddal's name will recognize her face: She is Millais's doomed Ophelia and Rossetti's beatified Beatrice, in two of the nineteenth century's most famous paintings. Her image is recognized the world over as the incarnation of the Pre-Raphaelites - flowing wavy locks of deep red hair contrasted against otherworldly pale skin. Lizzie's fame was a remarkable phenomenon: Red-haired, quite tall, and painfully thin, she was the opposite of the prevailing Victorian standard of beauty, yet she scaled the social ranks to become the unlikely ideal." "Lizzie's immortality and position in London's art world were decreed from the moment she first modeled for the young Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti and Lizzie moved in the loftiest artistic circles: Their friends and supporters included luminaries such as Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, John Ruskin, Ford Madox Brown, and Lucinda Hawksley's own great-great-great-grandfather, Charles Dickens. As a couple, Lizzie and Rossetti were passionately attracted to each other and mutually destructive: Rossetti pleaded possessive adoration for, Lizzie while at the same engaging in yet another affair. Even after they finally married, the emotional turmoil proved too much for Lizzie and she committed suicide at only thirty-three years old." "Lucinda Hawskley's evocative narrative removes Lizzie from the background of Rossetti's life and for the first time makes her the central focus. She was not merely the Pre-Raphaelites' obsession and muse, but also a talented poet and artist in her own right, sketching illustrations to accompany works by Tennyson and Browning. Like the members of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, Lizzie chose themes from literature and was inspired by medievalism, Arthurian legend, and Shakespearean drama."--BOOK JACKET.Hawksley, Lucinda is the author of 'Lizzie Siddal Face of the Pre-raphaelites' with ISBN 9780802715500 and ISBN 0802715508.