Siddal, Elizabeth Eleanor

(1829-1862)

   She was the daughter of a London ironmonger, and while working in a dressmaking and millinery shop she was noticed by Walter Deverell, one of the early pre-Raphaelites, and became the celebrated pre-Raphaelite artists' model. She sat for Deverell, William Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais as the drowned Ophelia. Within a short time she was sitting only for Dante Gabriel Rossetti (see entry), whom she married in 1860. Her particular beauty was a strong influence on what beauty represented to the pre-Raphaelites. To please Rossetti, she dropped the second 'l' from her surname. She, herself, took up painting and did a self-portrait, and some of her designs were included in the 1857 pre-Raphaelite exhibition in London. Her paintings were often of the Arthurian legend and other idealized medieval themes. It is thought that she suffered from tuberculosis or depression and this was her reason for taking laudanum, which eventually killed her. She was buried with other members of the Rossetti family in Highgate Cemetery, North London. Some of her poems: "A Silent Wood," "At Last," "Dead Love," "Lord, May I Come?" "The Passing of Love," "Worn Out."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Love's Witness: Five Centuries of Love Poetry by Women. Jill Hollis, ed. Carroll and Graf, Inc., 1993. Poemhunter (www.poemhunter.com). Sound the Deep Waters: Women's Romantic Poetry in the Victorian Age. Pamela Norris, ed. Little, Brown, 1991. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. Christopher Ricks, ed. Oxford University Press, 1987. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Victorian Women Poets: An Antholog y. Angela Leighton and Margaret Reynolds, eds. Blackwell, 1991. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).