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 and 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 step inside a story tour for Hyde Park in London entitled The Great Exhibition on the BARDEUM mobile app which takes visitors into the same setting as in The Doll Factory. [5]
The book 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 is 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]
Again set in Victorian England, Elizabeth's second book released in 2021 looks at the world of circus "freaks" and atrocity exhibitions, but from the perspective of one of the persons chosen for such a role due their imperfections, but has a very unconventional approach rather than the standard heroes and villains. [9] The book was published on 13 May 2021. [10]
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" modelled in part 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.
Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, better known as Elizabeth Siddal, was an English artist, artists' 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.
Fettes College is a co-educational private boarding and day school in Craigleith, Edinburgh, Scotland, with over two-thirds of its pupils in residence on campus. The school was originally a boarding school for boys only and became co-ed in 1983. In 1978 the College had a nine-hole golf course, an ice-skating rink used in winter for ice hockey and in summer as an outdoor swimming pool, a cross-country running track and a rifle shooting range within the forested 300-acre grounds. Fettes is sometimes referred to as a public school, although that term was traditionally used in Scotland for state schools. The school was founded with a bequest of Sir William Fettes in 1870 and started admitting girls in 1970. It follows the English rather than the Scottish education system and has nine houses. The main building, called the Bryce Building, was designed by David Bryce.
Goblin Market is a narrative poem by Christina Rossetti. It tells the story of Laura and Lizzie who are tempted with fruit by goblin merchants. In a letter to her publisher, Rossetti claimed that the poem, which is interpreted frequently as having features of remarkably sexual imagery, was not meant for children. However, in public Rossetti often stated that it was intended for children, and went on to write many children's poems. When it appeared in her first volume of poetry, Goblin Market and Other Poems, it was illustrated by her brother, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
William Dyce was a Scottish painter, who played a part in the formation of public art education in the United Kingdom, and the South Kensington Schools system. Dyce was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and played a part in their early popularity.
Margaret George is an American historical novelist specializing in epic fictional biographies. She is known for her meticulous research and the large scale of her books. She is the author of the bestselling novels The Autobiography of Henry VIII (1986), Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles (1992), The Memoirs of Cleopatra (1997), Mary, Called Magdalene (2002), Helen of Troy (2006), Elizabeth I (2011), The Confessions of Young Nero (2017), and The Splendor Before the Dark (2018).
The Delaware Art Museum is an art museum located on the Kentmere Parkway in Wilmington, Delaware, which holds a collection of more than 12,000 objects. The museum was founded in 1912 as the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts in honor of the artist Howard Pyle. The collection focuses on American art and illustration from the 19th to the 21st century, and on the English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood movement of the mid-19th century.
John Roddam Spencer Stanhope was an English artist associated with Edward Burne-Jones and George Frederic Watts and often regarded as a second-wave pre-Raphaelite. His work is also studied within the context of Aestheticism and British Symbolism. As a painter, Stanhope worked in oil, watercolor, fresco, tempera, and mixed media. His subject matter was mythological, allegorical, biblical, and contemporary. Stanhope was born in Cawthorne, near Barnsley, Yorkshire, England, and died in Florence, Italy. He was the uncle and teacher of the painter Evelyn De Morgan and encouraged then unknown local artist Abel Hold to exhibit at the Royal Academy, which he did 16 times.
Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale was a British artist known for her paintings, book illustrations, and a number of works in stained glass.
William Gaunt was a British artist and art historian, best known for his books on British 19th-century art.
Lucinda Hawksley is an English biographer, author, lecturer, and travel writer.
Craigcrook Castle is a 6,701 square feet (622.5 m2) castle giving its name to the Craigcrook district of Edinburgh, about 3 miles (4.8 km) west of the centre of Edinburgh, Scotland. The castle is primarily of the 17th century, though with later additions. In the 19th century, it was the home of Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey, and became known for its literary gatherings. It is a category B listed building.
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.
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.
Sophia Margaret "Sophie" Gray, later Sophia Margaret Caird, was a Scottish model for her brother-in-law, the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais. She was a younger sister of Euphemia "Effie" Gray, who married Millais in 1855 after the annulment of her marriage to John Ruskin. The spelling of her name was, after around 1861, sometimes "Sophy," but only within the family. In public she was known as Sophie and later in life, after her marriage, as Sophia.
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.
Lucy Madox Brown Rossetti was a British artist, author, and model associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. She was married to the writer and art critic William Michael Rossetti.
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 Pulley is a British author. She is best known for her debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, which won a Betty Trask Award.
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