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Edited collection of Elizabeth Siddall's extant poems, including critical analysis, biographical commentary, and contextual material. Also features illustrations, some by Siddall herself.
In the twenty-first century, 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. As Lucinda Hawksley explores in Lizzie Siddal, Face of the Pre-Raphaelites, Siddal's fame was a remarkable phenomenon: in a time when she was the opposite of the Victorian beauty (she was red-haired, quite tall, and painfully thin), she nonetheless scaled the social ranks to become the unlikely ideal. A pivotal figure in London's artistic world of the mid-nineteenth century, Lizzie's short life ended in a delirium of opium. In this, the first full work devoted solely to Lizzie—her austere beginnings, quick rise to fame, and tragic end—Hawksley brings together the worlds of art and literature with style and verve. Lizzie Siddal was not merely the Pre-Raphaelites' obsession and muse, she was a talented poet and artist in her own right. Her tragic and haunting life story serves as a cautionary tale, offering many parallels to the modern-day world of art, fashion, beauty, and our obsession with what we hold to be the ideal.
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In 1846, Edgar Allen Poe wrote that 'the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetic topic in the world'. The conjuction of death, art and femininity forms a rich and disturbing strata of Western culture, explored here in fascinating detail by Elisabeth Bronfen. Her examples range from Carmen to Little Nell, from Wuthering Heights to Vertigo, from Snow White to Frankenstein. The text is richly illustrated throughout with thirty-seven paintings and photographs.
The group of young painters and writers who coalesced into the Pre-Raphaelite movement in the middle years of the nineteenth century became hugely influential in the development not only of literature and painting, but also more generally of art and design. Though their reputation has fluctuated over the years, their achievements are now recognised and their style enjoyed and studied widely. This volume explores the lives and works of the central figures in the group: among others, the Rossettis, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Ford Madox Brown, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. This is the first book to provide a general introduction to the Pre-Raphaelite movement that integrates its literary and visual art forms. The Companion explains what made the Pre-Raphaelite style unique in painting, poetry, drawing and prose.