Lizzie Siddal: Pre-Raphaelite: The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel - Tapa dura

'A truly extraordinary achievement.' - A.N. WILSON 'The life behind the model for Millais's Ophelia...The first supermodel, Siddal remains a fascinating figure.' - Tatler 'A seductive biography. The story as it gains in tragedy is irresistible' - The Sunday Times 'This mesmerising biography gives life to an icon, and reads as grippingly as any rags-to-riches novel.' - The Mail on Sunday 'It is the stuff of opera' - Sunday Telegraph 'A heart-wrenching tale of art, addiction, adultery and loss, which transcends the decades. A fluid contemporary classic.' - Skytext

The supermodel did not arrive when Twiggy first donned false eyelashes; the concept began more than 100 years previously, with a young artists' model whose face captivated a generation. Saved from the drudgery of a working-class existence by a young Pre-Raphaelite artist, Lizzie Siddal rose to become one of the most famous faces in Victorian Britain and a pivotal figure of London's artistic world, until tragically ending her young life in a laudanum-soaked suicide in 1862. In the twenty-first century, even those who do not know her name always recognise her face: she is Millais' doomed Ophelia and Rossetti's beatified Beatrice. With many parallels in the modern-day world of art and fashion, this biography takes Lizzie from the background of Dante Rossetti's life and, finally, brings her to the forefront of her own.