Stunner: The Fall and Rise of Fanny Cornforth

Description

Fanny Cornforth was a Victorian supermodel whose face epitomised the vision and life of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In their twenty-five years together, she played many parts from muse, medium and lover to housekeeper and nurse. Due to her care of the artist, he was able to create some of the best known and celebrated art works of the nineteenth century, however at his death Fanny became an outcast, accused of stealing, lying and even murder. Her journey from rural poverty to celebrated beauty gave her a life she could never have dreamed of, but her choice of love above security saw her end her days in an asylum. Her afterlife, in the imagination of those who knew her and those that followed saw her cast as a villainess; Rossetti's folly, an illiterate prostitute who could crack walnut shells in her teeth. It's finally time that the truth is separated from the swirl of lies and that the life of one of the most infamous women of Bohemian London is told, from canvas to asylum.

Kirsty Stonell Walker is the author of Pre-Raphaelite Girl Gang and Light and Love, both published by Unicorn. Since 2011, she has written a blog, The Kissed Mouth, where she publishes original research on the many models of the Pre-Raphaelites. She has also written two novels about Victorian artists.

"In this, the third edition of her important reassessment of Fanny Cornforth's life, Stonell Walker continues to set the record straight. Through extensive research, including new information available since the previous edition, Stonell Walker reevaluates an historically maligned life, perpetually portrayed through the lens of Victorian patriarchal social and gender bias. In this correction of the canon Cornforth rises above 'stunner' status to retrieve her own life story." Margaretta Frederick (Annette Woolard Provine Curator, Bancroft Pre-Raphaelite Collection, Delaware Art Museum) "Through her thoughtful consideration of the sparse, documented facts and her critical examination of the sensationalized biographical fictions, Kirsty Stonell Walker portrays Fanny Cornforth as a real woman with her own, individual life story, releasing her from the confines of the picture frame and the shade of Rossetti's shadow. Stunner is a must-read for anyone interested in the Pre-Raphaelite circle." Debra N. Mancoff (Author of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Portraits of Women) "The much-maligned Fanny Cornforth has long needed to be brought out of the shadow of other Pre-Raphaelite women (and the deeper shadow of Pre-Raphaelite men). In this engaging biography, Kirsty Stonell-Walker brings Fanny into her rightful place in art history." Lucinda Hawksley, biographer of Lizzie Siddal