In 1857, a twenty-two-year-old woman stood trial in Glasgow for murdering her former lover. It was the cause célèbre of the day and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti declared her too beautiful to be executed whether she was guilty or not, saying, “you wouldn’t hang a stunner!” (‘Letters of DG Rossetti’, Atlantic Monthly vol. 77) Rossetti used the term ‘stunner’ quite…
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- Charles Augustus Howell, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Elizabeth Siddal, Georgiana Burne-Jones, John Ruskin, mary zambaco
The Worst Man in London
Seven years after her death, the coffin of Elizabeth Siddal was exhumed so that her husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, could publish the poetry he had buried with her. It happened in secret, yet eventually the deed came to be known and has added a macabre tinge to the tale of Elizabeth Siddal. Rossetti was not present when his wife’s…