Elizabeth Sarah Macneal (born 16 October 1988) is a British writer, author of the award-winning book The Doll Factory, described as a "lush Victorian fiction". [1]
Elizabeth Sarah Macneal (born 16 October 1988) is a British writer, author of the award-winning book The Doll Factory, described as a "lush Victorian fiction". [1]
Elizabeth was born in Edinburgh on 16 October 1988. She is the oldest of four children to award-winning Edinburgh architect Lorn Macneal [2] and his wife Catharine. She was educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh. [3]
She studied English literature at Somerville College, Oxford. After graduating, she did further postgraduate study at the University of East Anglia as a Malcolm Bradbury Scholar, where she gained an MA.
Elizabeth is a successful ceramicist, and this has supported her whilst working on the novel. She is based in Limehouse in east London. [4]
In 2021, Elizabeth also authored an immersive audiovisual tour for Hyde Park in London entitled The Great Exhibition on the BARDEUM mobile app set in the same setting as her first novel The Doll Factory. [5] This was first published on 2 May 2019 in UK and on 13 August in the USA. The book explores the complex relationship between Iris Whittle and her artist-admirer, Louis Frost, and Silas Reed, a taxidermist and curio-collector. It is set in London at the time of the Great Exhibition. It links to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the character of Iris is influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite model, Lizzie Siddal. [6] [7]
The book was initially published by Picador in the United Kingdom. In the United States, it ws published by Emily Bestler Books. It has already (August 2019) been translated into 29 languages and the TV-rights have been bought by Buccaneer Media. It is also available as an audio-book. [8]
Her second novel, published in 2021, was entitled Circus of Wonders, was also set in Victorian England, Elizabeth's second book released in 2021 looks at the world of freak shows and atrocity exhibitions, from the perspective of one of the persons chosen for such a role due their imperfections. [9] The book was published on 13 May 2021. [10]
The third novel, The Burial Plot, is a Gothic thriller set in 1839 in London, centring on themes of death and burial ritual in the 19th century. [11]
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet was an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was a child prodigy who, aged eleven, became the youngest student to enter the Royal Academy Schools. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded at his family home in London, at 83 Gower Street. Millais became the most famous exponent of the style, his painting Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50) generating considerable controversy, and he produced a picture that could serve as the embodiment of the historical and naturalist focus of the group, Ophelia, in 1851–52.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner who formed a seven-member "Brotherhood" partly modelled on the Nazarene movement. The Brotherhood was only ever a loose association and their principles were shared by other artists of the time, including Ford Madox Brown, Arthur Hughes and Marie Spartali Stillman. Later followers of the principles of the Brotherhood included Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and John William Waterhouse.
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English writer of romantic, devotional and children's poems, including "Goblin Market" and "Remember". She also wrote the words of two Christmas carols well known in Britain: "In the Bleak Midwinter", later set by Gustav Holst, Katherine Kennicott Davis, and Harold Darke, and "Love Came Down at Christmas", also set by Darke and other composers. She was a sister of the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and features in several of his paintings.
John William Waterhouse was an English painter known for working first in the Academic style and for then embracing the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's style and subject matter. His paintings are known for their depictions of women from both ancient Greek mythology and Arthurian legend. A high proportion depict a single young and beautiful woman in a historical costume and setting, though there are some ventures into Orientalist painting and genre painting, still mostly featuring women.
Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, better known as Elizabeth Siddal, was an English artist, art model, and poet. Siddal was perhaps the most significant of the female models who posed for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Their ideas of female beauty were fundamentally influenced and personified by her. Walter Deverell and William Holman Hunt painted Siddal, and she was the model for John Everett Millais's famous painting Ophelia (1852). Early in her relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Siddal became his muse and exclusive model, and he portrayed her in almost all his early artwork depicting women.
Helen Fielding is a British journalist, novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones. Fielding’s first novel was set in a refugee camp in East Africa and she started writing Bridget Jones in an anonymous column in London’s Independent newspaper. This turned into an unexpected hit, leading to four Bridget Jones novels and three movies, with a fourth movie announced in April 2024 for release in 2025.
Elizabeth Strout is an American novelist and author. She is widely known for her works in literary fiction and her descriptive characterization. She was born and raised in Portland, Maine, and her experiences in her youth served as inspiration for her novels–the fictional "Shirley Falls, Maine" is the setting of four of her nine novels.
Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale was a British artist, a late exponent of Pre-Raphaelitism. She produced paintings in oils and watercolour, book illustrations, small-scale sculptures and a number of designs for works in stained glass.
Lucinda Hawksley is an English biographer, author, lecturer, and travel writer.
Desperate Romantics is a six-part television drama serial about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, first broadcast on BBC Two between 21 July and 25 August 2009.
Tuppence Amelia Middleton is a British actress known for her performances in film, television and theatre. In 2010, she was nominated for the London Evening Standard Film Awards for Most Promising Newcomer.
Joanna Mary Boyce was a British painter associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. She is also known by her married name as Mrs. H.T. Wells, or as Joanna Mary Wells. She produced multiple works with historical themes, as well as portraits and sketches, and authored art criticism responding to her contemporaries. She was the sister of Pre-Raphaelite watercolourist George Price Boyce.
Katie Hickman is an English novelist, historian and travel writer. She was born in Wellington, New Zealand to the diplomat and author John Kyrle Hickman and Jennifer Olive (Love) Hickman. She is the author of ten books, including two best-selling history books, which between them have sold more than a quarter of a million copies worldwide. Her travel book A Trip to the Light Fantastic was one of The Independent's Books of the Year (1993) and was short-listed for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award (1994). Her fiction works have earned a nomination for the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award and her trilogy of historical novels The Aviary Gate (2008), The Pindar Diamond (2011) and The House at Bishopsgate (2016) have been translated into 20 languages. She is featured in the Oxford University Press guide to women travellers, Wayward Women.
Erin Morgenstern is an American multimedia artist and the author of two fantasy novels. The Night Circus (2011) was published in more than a dozen languages by 2013 and won the annual Locus Award for Best First Novel. She is a 2012 recipient of an Alex Award. Her second book, The Starless Sea, was published in 2019.
Fanny Eaton was a Jamaican-born artist's model and domestic worker. She is best known as a model for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their circle in England between 1859 and 1867. Her public debut was in Simeon Solomon's painting The Mother of Moses, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1860. She was also featured in works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Joanna Mary Boyce, Rebecca Solomon, and others.
Janet Mann(Jessie) (20 January 1805 – 21 April 1867) was the studio assistant of the pioneering Scottish photographers David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. She is "a strong candidate as the first Scottish woman photographer" and one of the first women anywhere to be involved in photography.
Natasha Katherine Pulley is a British author. She is best known for her debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, which won a Betty Trask Award.
Emily Rosaline Orme (1835–1915) was a leader of the Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage. She was a noted campaigner for women's suffrage in Scotland.
The Doll Factory is a period thriller television series based on the novel of the same name by Elizabeth Macneal, adapted by Charley Miles for Paramount+. The series premiered on 27 November 2023, with all episodes released on 1 December 2023.
Susan Elizabeth Stokes-Chapman is an English author of gothic historical fiction, particularly set in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Her debut novel Pandora (2022) became a #1 Sunday Times bestseller upon release. This was followed by The Shadow Key (2024).
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