Notable Pre-Raphaelite Muses, by Stephen Gibson

Ophelia, by John Everett Millais (UK) 1851.

Notable Pre-Raphaelite Muses
 
Rossetti’s Lizzie Siddal is the most famous one
(see Millais’s Ophelia), but there were others:
Effie Gray—John Ruskin’s ex-, who married
 
Millais after divorcing Ruskin, had eight children
(Ruskin wouldn’t touch her because of pubic hair);
Jane Morris—progressive in everything—carried
 
on with Rossetti right under the nose of William
(British Arts & Crafts Movement, social reformer);
and Fanny Cornforth, held séances to contact Lizzie
 
(Rossetti’s with her the night Lizzie takes laudanum,
OD’s).

Stephen Gibson
​
Stephen Gibson’s most recent poetry collection, Self-Portrait in a Door-Length Mirror, was selected by Billy Collins as winner of the 2017 Miller Williams Prize from the University of Arkansas Press. He has also published six prior collections: The Garden of Earthly Delights Book of Ghazals (Texas Review Press, 2016), Rorschach Art Too (2014 Donald Justice Prize, Story Line Press, West Chester University), Paradise (Miller Williams prize finalist, University of Arkansas Press), Frescoes (Lost Horse Press book prize), Masaccio’s Expulsion (MARGIE/IntuiT House book prize), and Rorschach Art (Red Hen Press). His poetry has appeared in countless publications from The American Journal of Poetry to The Yale Review.