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| E Siddal Manuscript - Courtesy of The Ashmoleum Image Library |
Elizabeth Siddal's poetry was never published in her life time. Handwritten on undated and untitled manuscripts and scraps of paper, it is not clear if they were ever intended for publication. Collected by Rossetti after her death in 1862 , he offered some to his sister, the poet Christina Rossetti, for publication but she deemed them " too hopelessly sad for publication". Bleak in tone, mainly on themes of the intransience of love, death and grief, his brother ,William Rossetti remarked on a " darkness that can be felt" within some of her verses. He edited and published some of her poems from the 1890's onwards underwhelmingly endorsed as: "restricted in both quantity and development; but... far from undeserving of notice". Siddal's handwritten manuscripts can be viewed online at the Ashmoleum's Museum Image Library.
In common with the other Pre-Raphaelites, Siddal used literary sources such as folk ballads and poems as subjects or inspiration for her art and poetry. While her art was exhibited in a Pre-Raphaelite exhibition in 1857, her poetry was not always considered worthy of critical analysis, but deemed as personal or biographical musings and writing. Serena Trowbridge suggests that "the poems do not seem to have gained credibility in critical works on nineteenth-century literature. Partly this is due to Siddall’s mythologised, idolised status”¹ . Increasingly her poems are recognised for their poetic merit including the use of imagery, tone, form and rhythm. In particular elements such as the emotional charge of her poetry , its directness of tone, and the articulation of the female voice and perspective have been praised.
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| D G Rossetti E Siddal Reading Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge |
"Siddal creates with "Love and Hate a poem that, by its demands for the addressee's silence and averted gaze, flaunts its own outspokenness" Constance Hassett ²
First published and given its title by William Rossetti , Love and Hate is startling in its tone of anger. The speaker directly vents her fury at her lover's falseness and toxicity and her bitterness that she has wasted her love and life, and is now left emotionally spent. The target is obviously assumed to be Rossetti but the reasons less clear as the poem is undated : possibly infidelity , his persistent inability to commit to marriage or their estrangement from 1858-1860 prior to their marriage. The scathing command of " Nor gaze upon my face" recalls the line "He feeds upon her face by day and night," from Christina Rossetti's poem In An Artist's Studio" which describes Rossetti's obsessive portrayals of Siddal's features in the early years of their relationship.
A recent collection of 15 of Elizabeth Siddal poems can be found in The (Mostly) Complete Poems of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal by Elizabeth Elinor Siddal (Author), Kyle Cassidy (Introduction) 2025 (featured above). There is also a You Tube clip which provides a look inside the book. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWgt3hYClgM