In the 1850s and 1860s Elizabeth Siddal was synonymous with Pre-Raphaelitism. Images of Siddal's pale complexion, flowing copper-red hair, long neck, and large-lidded eyes haunt the canvases of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. She served as a model for paintings by Walter Howell Deverell, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who eventually married Siddal, his favorite model and muse. Her life has become the stuff of myth and legend, making it difficult for biographers to separate fact from fiction. A continuing morbid fascination with Siddal persists, largely stemming from the many artistic representations of her as a "pale lady of death," from her lingering illnesses and mysterious death, and from the infamous exhumation of her coffin in order to retrieve her husband's buried poetry.

While Siddal has not been forgotten in the years since her death, her artistic and literary achievements have received almost no critical...