The (Mostly) Complete Poems of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal

Who Was Elizabeth Siddal?

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal is embedded in Pre-Raphaelite legend as Millais’ Ophelia and Rossetti’s Beatrice. But behind the lure of her unusual beauty—and the lore around her relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti—what did she actually have to say about it all?

Siddal began her career as an artist’s model for the Victorian avant-garde but later gained recognition as a painter in her own right, even earning the patronage of John Ruskin, the era’s foremost art critic. Like many Pre-Raphaelite painters, she also wrote poetry, scribbling on scraps of paper and the backs of letters, constantly revising and reshaping her words.

Chronic illness, pregnancy loss, and a fraught marriage slowly stripped away Siddal’s sense of self. She died at age 32 from a laudanum overdose. While her art was relatively well-known, none of her poetry was published during her lifetime. Her prose was doomed to obscurity, tucked into notebooks or stashed away in drawers.

The (Mostly) Complete Poems of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal

Published by Laurel Tree Press, The (mostly) Complete Poems of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal is the first comprehensive collection to bring Siddal’s poetry to a wide audience. Importantly, it reasserts Siddal’s voice into the Pre-Raphaelite conversation, in which her creative contributions are often overshadowed by her reputation as a muse.

This edition gathers all 16 of Siddal’s known poems into a hand-sized, period-inspired volume, complete with a decorative gold-inlaid cover. Originally published by her brother-in-law and biased biographer William Rossetti, these poems have otherwise appeared only in rare or academic editions. The (mostly) Complete Poems includes an introduction by project leader Kyle Cassidy, which situates Siddal’s poetic voice within her life in London and the broader literary context.

Siddal Speaks For Herself

The book’s first print run of 1,862 commemorates the year of Siddal’s death—hauntingly apt for what the author’s sister-in-law Christina Rossetti once described as “too hopelessly sad for publication en masse.”

Indeed, Siddal’s poetry is devastatingly personal. Each line strips away the decorative facade, revealing her intimate struggles with her marriage, her body, and her sense of self. The woman behind the romantic portraits unfolds in multiple dimensions, only to crumble beneath the weight of the “muse” mantle.

In The (mostly) Complete Poems, Siddal is no longer flattened into a spectral figure, waiting in the wings to be admired or acted upon. She is finally immortalized in her own words.

The (mostly) Complete Poems of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal was released in July 2025. You can order the book through the publisher’s website.