"In 1846, Edgar Allan Poe wrote that "the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetic topic in the world'. The conjunction of death, art and femininity forms a rich and disturbing strata of Western culture, explored here in fascinating detail by Elisabeth Bronfen. Her examples range from Carmen to Little Nell, from Wuthering Height6s to Vertigo, from Snow White to Frankenstein. The text is richly illustrated throughout with thirty-seven paintings and photographs." --From cover.

"Elisabeth Bronfen throws light on the disturbing conjunction of beauty, morbidity and the feminine that pervades our culture. Literary history, art criticism and psychoanalysis fruitfully combine to lay bare the uneasy interplay of pathology and power revealed in representations of the female corpse." --Ray Porter, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London.