Böcker av Glenda Youde

Better known as 'Lizzie Siddal', the model who posed for John Everett Millais's painting Ophelia, Elizabeth Eleanor Rossetti is now finally recognised as a Pre-Raphaelite artist in her own right, working alongside her male colleagues on equal terms. Elizabeth's designs were truly original, the creation of her own imagination. They embodied the essence of Pre-Raphaelitism that her husband Gabriel and other members of the circle were striving to achieve. The male members of the group shamelessly copied the ideas from Elizabeth's small sketches to create their own large masterpieces which have since become the epitome of Pre-Raphaelite art. The exclusion of women from the narrative has had a major impact in creating the perception of the Pre-Raphaelites as a predominantly male artistic movement; in Beyond Ophelia Dr Glenda Youde shows Elizabeth not to be a pathetic drowning figure, but as the initiator of a directional change in the visual development of Pre-Raphaelite art. Featuring a unique collection of photographs of Elizabeth's work commissioned by her husband after her death, this book highlights the critical importance of her role within the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and one which ultimately led to the evolution of the Aesthetic Movement.

This is the first edited collection of essays entirely devoted to the women of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Inspired by the Pre-Raphaelite Sisters exhibition and conference of 2019¿20, the individual essays present new research into the wide-ranging creativity of the Pre-Raphaelite women. Artistic subjects include Evelyn De Morgan¿s goldwork paintings and her experiments with automatic writing. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Mary Seton Watts and Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale are also examined. Elizabeth Siddal¿s relationship with her sister-in-law Christina Rossetti is explored, as is her appropriation of the Pre-Raphaelite principle of «truth to nature». Women¿s writing is addressed, extracting Georgiana Burne-Jones from the memoir of her husband and reassessing the book of fairy tales she planned with Siddal. Fashion history informs an analysis of the sartorial practices of Jane Morris and Siddal, while the influence exerted by the Siddal¿Rossetti relationship on a prominent Czech artist demonstrates how women initiated the spread of Pre-Raphaelite ideals in Europe. More personalised accounts of engaging with and recovering women in history include the painstaking genealogical research undertaken by the great-grandson of model Fanny Eaton and the curation of a Siddal exhibition at Wightwick Manor. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the Pre-Raphaelites.