The Lady of Shalott

... is best known through the poem of that title by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. This was based on a thirteenth–century Italian romance novelette entitled Donna di Scalotta.

In Arthurian legend, the Lady of Shalott is known as Elaine of Astolat (or variants of that name). Her story appears in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur and Tennyson's Idylls of the King.

In Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott, she is a mysterious noblewoman who lives in a castle on an island in a river that flows through Camelot. She suffers from a mysterious curse and must continually weave images on her loom, without ever looking directly out at the world. Instead, she looks into a mirror, which reflects the busy road and the people of Camelot who pass by her island. "She knows not what the curse may be / And so she weaveth steadily."

One day Sir Lancelot passes by. She is so entranced by his appearance that she stops weaving and looks out of her window toward Camelot, so invoking the curse. "Out flew the web and floated wide – The mirror crack'd from side to side; 'The curse is come upon me,' cried The Lady of Shalott."

She leaves her tower, finds a boat upon which she writes her name, and floats down the river to Camelot. But she dies before arriving at the palace. The knights and ladies, including Lancelot himself, wonder at her loveliness.

The ghostly lady floating silently downstream in her boat soon became a favourite subject for painters, most notably the Pre–Raphaelites; the most famous version is by John William Waterhouse.