The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal by Jan Marsh

As a final gesture before her burial Dante-Gabriel placed a book of unpublished poems in her coffin. In 1862 she died of an overdose of laudanum, probably administered accidentally. In 1860 they eventually married, but her husband's pursuit of other women quickly undermined the relationship. She and Dante Gabriel became lovers and lived together as man and wife for some years. As a result she contracted pneumonia, weakening an already delicate constitution. She posed for this picture, lying in a bath of water heated by candles and oil lamps. She posed for a number of pictures, the most notable being 'Ophelia' by Millais, which hangs in the Tate Britain gallery in London. With her full lips, and long auburn hair she epitomised the Pre-Raphelites concept of female beauty. He introduced her to his fellow artists including John Everett Millais, Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rosetti. At age 19, was working in a hat shop in London's Piccadilly, when she was spotted by Walter Deverall, a member of the Pre-Raphaelite art movement. 'Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal.' In Dictionary of Literary Biography. 'Siddal, Elizabeth Eleanor (1829–1862).' Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Aldershot, Hants: Solar Press in association with Ashmolean Museum, 1991.

Rossetti's Portraits of Elizabeth Siddal: A Catalogue of the Drawings and Watercolours. 'Dante Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal.' Burlington Magazine (1903). Dante Gabriel Rossetti: his Family-letters, with a Memoir by William Michael Rossetti. Lewis and Mark Samuels Lasner collected her works and published them in 1978.

Elizabeth's brother-in-law William Michael Rossetti had printed all fifteen of her poems piecemeal by 1906. Rossetti placed a manuscript of poems in her coffin. Their daughter was stillborn on May 2, 1861, and Elizabeth committed suicide by opium overdose on February 11, 1862. Clement's Church, Hastings, and honeymooned in Paris and Boulogne. She sought him out again several years later, however, and they were wed on May 23, 1860, at St. Illness then struck, leading her to stop painting, and her engagement with Rossetti fell away in 1858. In time, she modelled for Deverell, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt, then became Rossetti's mistress, and by 1852 began painting for herself and won the financial support of John Ruskin. She caught the eye of a pre-Raphaelite painter, Walter Howell Deverell, as she worked in a bonnet store in Cranbourne Alley, London. She had a very ordinary upbringing, distinguished only by her personal beauty, but it was enough. Elizabeth Siddal(l) was born on July 25, 1829, in Holborn, London, the child of Charles Crooke Siddall and Elizabeth Elenor Evans Siddall.

The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal by Jan Marsh