Category: Elizabeth Siddal: Personal Life

  • Lizzie Siddal Emerges from the Ghostly Mist

    Lizzie Siddal Emerges from the Ghostly Mist

    It would have been a perfect plot for a 1960s Hammer horror film: on the death of his wife, a poet places a treasured manuscript of his poems in her casket. Years later he has a new muse and love, a woman who had been a friend to them both. So he ghoulishly engineers his…

  • What shapes our perception of Elizabeth Siddal?

    When beginning to research the life of Elizabeth Siddal, readers will invariably encounter this description of her, written by poet William Allingham in his diary: “Short, sad, and strange her life; it must have seemed to her like a troubled dream.” It’s a heartbreaking and poignant epitaph that contributes to our perception of Siddal as…

  • Guest Post from Kirsty Stonell Walker: The Tragedy of Elizabeth Siddal

    Kirsty Stonell Walker is the author of Stunner, the Fall and Rise of Fanny Cornforth. (Available at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk)  Kirsty originally shared this post on her blog The Kissed Mouth and I am extremely grateful that she granted me permission to post it here as well. ——– You will probably be aware by now…

  • Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers: Rossetti and Siddal

    I recently happened upon a 14 volume set of Little Journeys at a local second-hand bookshop.  I was practically giddy with excitement to find these, especially the volume that includes Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal.  I’ve scanned the book and transcribed the text.  Other volumes include Christina Rossetti, William Morris, and John Ruskin.  I plan on…

  • Handwriting Analysis of Lizzie Siddal & Dante Gabriel Rossetti

    Author Jack  Challem, who was kind enough to share a copy of the Rossettis marriage certificate and the first photo of Lizzie’s grave published on this site, has also been gracious enough to mail me an article he co-wrote for The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies in 1987. This is an analysis of the handwriting of…

  • Timeline of Elizabeth Siddal’s Life

    July 25, 1829 – Birth of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall (born at Charles Street, Hatton Garden) 1831 – Siddall family moves from Hatton Garden to Southwark (in South London) 1833 – Lizzie’s father, Charles, runs a business from his home at 8 Kent Place. This is the home they rented from James Greenacre, who would later…

  • Interview with Lucinda Hawksley

    Lucinda Hawksley is a best-selling author, speaker, and the great-great-great- granddaughter of Charles Dickens. If you have not yet read her biography of Lizzie Siddal: Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel, I encourage you to do so. It is an interesting and well-researched narrative of Siddal’s life. She has also recently published a biography of Charles…

  • Letters Written by Elizabeth Siddal

    Reading Lizzie’s letters, although they are quite brief, gives a happy glimpse into her life. As we read her words and feel her voice, she is no longer silent on the canvas as a doomed Ophelia or an exalted Beatrice. A Letter from Lizzie to Rossetti (regarding her trip to Nice) (Published in Ruskin, Rossetti,…

  • Elizabeth Siddal’s Death, Described by William Bell Scott

    Published in Autobiographical Notes of the Life of William Bell Scott (New York, Harper & Brothers 1892) The auguries of happiness from his marriage, entertained some of Rossetti’s friends, were frightfully dispelled. For myself, knowing Gabriel better than his brother did, though from the outside, I knew marriage was not a tie he had become…

  • William Bell Scott Recalls His First Meeting with Lizzie

    William Bell Scott Recalls his First Meeting with Lizzie, Published in Autobiographical Notes of the Life of William Bell Scott (New York, Harper & Brothers 1892) A year or two after in midsummer, the time when I always visited London, Howitt having returned from Australia, and being with Mary Howitt and Anna Mary, their daughter,…