Books and Reading

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If you’d like to read more about Elizabeth Siddal, I recommend starting with Jan Marsh’s The Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood. It offers a helpful introduction to the wider circle and shows how their lives, friendships, and creative work overlapped. For a closer look at Siddal herself, Marsh’s Elizabeth Siddal: Her Story explores her life and artistic ambitions, while The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal examines how her story has been told and reshaped over time. I also recommend Lucinda Hawksley’s Lizzie Siddal: The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel, particularly for readers who enjoy a biography written with a strong sense of storytelling.

For readers beginning to explore Pre-Raphaelite art, I recommend The Pre-Raphaelites: Their Lives and Work in 500 Images as a starting point for understanding the stories and ideas within the paintings. Pre-Raphaelite Sisters, edited by Jan Marsh, explores the women’s contributions as artists, models, and makers. For those who enjoy following an individual life, Marsh’s Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Painter and Poet is another recommendation, bringing his painting and writing into the story of the man who made them.

For readers who enjoy historical fiction, I also recommend A Curl of Copper and Pearl by my friend Kirsty Stonell Walker. The novel imagines the life of Alexa Wilding, whose face appears in several of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s paintings. Told from Alexa’s perspective, it offers a fictional encounter with Rossetti’s circle and the complicated relationships surrounding his work, a companion to the biographies and art histories on this page.