In May 1860, after a long engagement, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal were married. When they first met she was a dressmaker's assistant, a beautiful and talented young woman who had sat as a model for one of Rossetti's friends, and who was the Beatrice of Rossetti's own pictures. Hall Caine, who became a close friend of Rossetti in his last years, relates the tragic outcome of this marriage and its strange sequel.
Note from Gabriel Rossetti , from Literary Anecdotes