William Sharp (writer)

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William Sharp
William Sharp

William Sharp (12 September 1855 – 12 December 1905) was a Scottish writer, of poetry and literary biography in particular, who from 1893 wrote also as Fiona MacLeod, a pseudonym kept almost secret during his lifetime. He was also an editor of the poetry of Ossian, Walter Scott, Matthew Arnold, Algernon Swinburne and Eugene Lee-Hamilton.

Sharp was born in Paisley and educated at Glasgow Academy and the University of Glasgow, which he attended 1871-1872 without completing a degree. In 1872 he contracted typhoid. During 1874-5 he worked in a Glasgow law office. His health broke down in 1876 and he was sent on a voyage to Australia. In 1878 he took a position in a bank in London.

He was introduced to Dante Gabriel Rossetti by Sir Noel Paton, and joined the Rossetti literary group; which included Hall Caine, Philip Bourke Marston and Swinburne. He married his cousin Elizabeth in 1884, and devoted himself to writing full time from 1891, travelling widely.

Also about this time, he developed an intensely romantic but perhaps asexual attachment to Edith Wingate Rinder, another writer of the consciously Celtic Edinburgh circle surrounding Patrick Geddes and "The Evergreen." It was to Rinder ("EWR") he attributed the inspiration for his writings as Fiona MacLeod thereafter, and to whom he dedicated his first MacLeod novel ("Pharais") in 1894. Sharp had a complex and ambivalent relationship with W. B. Yeats during the 1890s, as a central tension in the Celtic Revival. Yeats initially found MacLeod acceptable and Sharp not, and later fathomed their identity. Sharp found the dual personality an increasing strain.

On occasions when it was necessary for "Fiona MacLeod" to write to someone unaware of the dual identity, Sharp would dictate the text to his sister (Mary Beatrice Sharp), whose handwriting would then be passed off as Fiona's manuscript. During his MacLeod period, Sharp was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

He died (and is buried) at Castello di Maniace, Sicily. In 1910, Elizabeth Sharp published a biographical memoir attempting to explain the creative necessity behind the deception, and edited a complete edition of his works.

[edit] Works

  • Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Record and Study (1882)
  • The Human Inheritance, The New Hope, Motherhood and Other Poems (1882)
  • Sopistra and Other Poems (1884);
  • Earth's Voices (1884) poems
  • Sonnets of this century (1886) editor
  • Sea-Music: An Anthology of Poems (1887)
  • Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1887)
  • Romantic Ballads and Poems of Phantasy (1888)
  • Sport of chance (1888) novel
  • Life of Heinrich Heine (1888)
  • American Sonnets (1889)
  • Life of Robert Browning (1889)
  • The Children of Tomorrow (1889)
  • Sospiri di Roma (1891) poems
  • Life of Joseph Severn (1892)
  • A Fellowe and his Wife (1892)
  • Flower o' the Vine (1892)
  • Pagan Review (1892)
  • Vistas (1894);
  • Pharais (1894) novel as FM
  • The Gipsy Christ and Other Tales (1895)
  • Mountain Lovers (1895) novel as FM
  • The Laughter of Peterkin (1895) as FM
  • The Sin-Eater and Other Tales (1895) as FM
  • Ecce puella and Other Prose Imaginings (1896)
  • The Washer of the Ford (1896) novel as FM
  • Fair Women in Painting and Poetry (1896)
  • Lyra Celtica: An Anthology of Representative Celtic Poetryhc*By Sundown Shores (1900) as FM
  • The Divine Adventure (1900) as FM
  • Iona (1900) as FM
  • From the Hills of Dream, Threnodies Songs and Later Poems (1901) as FM
  • The Progress of Art in the Nineteenth century (1902)
  • The House of Usna (1903) play as FM
  • Literary Geography (1904)
  • The Winged Destiny: Studies in the Spiritual History of the Gael (1904) as FM and dedicated to Dr John Goodchild
  • The Immortal Hour (1908) play as FM

[edit] References

  • "William Sharp (Fiona Macleod): A Memoir" (1910, 1912) Elizabeth A. Sharp
  • William Sharp: "Fiona Macleod", 1855-1905 (1970) Flavia Alaya
  • The Sexual Tensions of William Sharp: A Study of the Birth of Fiona Macleod, Incorporating Two Lost Works, 'Ariadne in Naxos' and 'Beatrice'" (1996) Terry L. Meyers

[edit] External links