Born in London on the 25th of July 1829, Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (the family name was ' Siddall' but she signed with a shorter spelling), daughter of a cutler and small businessman from Sheffield.

There are no records of her education until the age of 18, where it is known that Miss Siddall was working both as a milliners apprentice and dressmakers assistant in a shop on Cranbourne Alley. She came to the attention of a Mr William Allingham, a writer who was associated with the members of the Pre-Raphaelite 'vortex', when he saw her working at the milliners. Allingham later told Walter Deverell, another artist in the vortex, who had his mother convince Miss Siddall to pose for him as Viola in his painting "Twelfth Night".

In 1852, Millais composed and painted the portrait of 'Ophelia' in his converted greenhouse studio. Miss Siddall was working as his model lying, day after day, in a bath of water, heated only by candles and oil lamps situated underneath the bath. It was as a result of which she contracted pneumonia. As a result a complaint was brought against Millais from Miss Siddalls father, with the threat for an action of £50 damages. The action was settled and the resulting painting was considered to be the best likeness ever painted of her.

Further in 1852, Miss Siddall started informal studies with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Worked mainly in watercolours, taking inspiration from a wide variety of sources, including Shakespeare, the Bible, poets and balladeers, Miss Siddall had a tendency toward the works of Tennyson. In 1855, Mrs Tennyson even tried to get Elizabeth included in the Moxon Tennyson but was unable to do so, the official reason being that Miss Siddall was too unknown.

In 1855 she secured patronage from John Ruskin. It was from this time that she produced a range of small pictures and composed a collection of poems. Ruskin's allowance allowed Miss Siddall to visit Paris and Nice for the sake of her variable health. With her exhibition debut at the Pre-Raphaelite salon at Russell Place in the summer of 1857, which included drawings on literary subjects and a self-portrait in oils; the watercolour Clerk Saunders was also included in the British Art show that toured the USA.

In 1857-1588 Miss Siddall visited Sheffield, where she made use of the art school facilities, and Matlock in Derbyshire. Depression and ill-health which had been plaguing her for a number of years continued unabated throughout, no doubt, unaided by the repeated consumption of laudanum,

In May 1860, at a time of sickness, and after a seven year engagement she married Rossetti. Miss Siddall and Rossetti were married only two years, settling with him in London where she continued working, on romantic-medieval watercolours, assisting also with the decoration of William Morris's Red House and planning to collaborate on illustrations with Georgiana Burne-Jones

In the January of 1861, Miss Siddall gave birth to a stillborn daughter. Her grieving was unaided by the onset of prenatal depression, despite which, a few months later, Miss Siddall became pregnant once again.

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall died from a laudanum overdose in the February of 1862, at the age of 32. Officially recorded as an "Accidental Death." her open coffin was presented to mourners in the sitting room of their house in Highgate village

Seven years later, Rossetti's artistic and literary reputation had begun to diminish, due in no small part to his increasing addiction to Whisky and chloral. Charles Augustus Howell, Rossetti's literary agent, in an attempt to bring his client back to public eye, suggested to Rossetti that love poems written by Rossetti and in a fit of grief had been buried with his late wife should be exhumed and published. To save public discomfort, the grave was exhumed after dark. Unfortunately, the love poems were not the literary success expected. Rossetti further collected the late Elizabeth Siddalls works, photographed her drawings and sketches, from which her ideas and output can be reconstructed.