Lizzie Siddal

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's 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.

'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' Sunday Times
'This mesmerising biography gives life to an icon, and reads as grippingly as any rags-to-riches novel' 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

Lucinda Dickens Hawksley is the great-great-great granddaughter of Charles Dickens and a patron of the Charles Dickens Museum in London. She has written more than 20 books, including Lizzie Siddal, The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel (2004) and Katey, The Life and Loves of Dickens's Artist Daughter (2006). A part-time lecturer as well as a writer, Lucinda is an expert in Dickens's family life and has been awarded a fellowship to study the life of Augustus Dickens (Charles's brother and the original "Boz") at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

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