The young women gracing the canvases of Pre-Raphaelite painters strike the viewer as attractive yet eerily soulless. As "beautiful corpses" they embody the feminine ideal of the late 19th century. Christiane Frohmann comes to them from the future, bringing these Pre-Raphaelite girls to life with their wry observations on digital culture in the present. (One thing they do not want to talk about, however, is art history. The notion of the Pre-Raphaelite assumes a life of its own, as the images are continually de- and recontextualized throughout the book.)

Christiane Frohmann studied literature and philosophy at the Freie Universitaet Berlin and Yale. Today she is a publisher and author, speaker and seminar instructor on digital culture, and active participant in efforts to make sure the Internet remains a free and beautiful place to be.