The Life and Letters of William Sharp and “Fiona Macleod”
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The Life and Letters of William Sharp and “Fiona Macleod” Volume 2: 1895-1899 W The Life and Letters of ILLIAM WILLIAM F. HALLORAN William Sharp and What an achievement! It is a major work. The lett ers taken together with the excellent H F. introductory secti ons - so balanced and judicious and informati ve - what emerges is an amazing picture of William Sharp the man and the writer which explores just how “Fiona Macleod” fascinati ng a fi gure he is. Clearly a major reassessment is due and this book could make it ALLORAN happen. Volume 2: 1895-1899 —Andrew Hook, Emeritus Bradley Professor of English and American Literature, Glasgow University William Sharp (1855-1905) conducted one of the most audacious literary decep� ons of his or any � me. Sharp was a Sco� sh poet, novelist, biographer and editor who in 1893 began The Life and Letters of William Sharp to write cri� cally and commercially successful books under the name Fiona Macleod. This was far more than just a pseudonym: he corresponded as Macleod, enlis� ng his sister to provide the handwri� ng and address, and for more than a decade “Fiona Macleod” duped not only the general public but such literary luminaries as William Butler Yeats and, in America, E. C. Stedman. and “Fiona Macleod” Sharp wrote “I feel another self within me now more than ever; it is as if I were possessed by a spirit who must speak out”. This three-volume collec� on brings together Sharp’s own correspondence – a fascina� ng trove in its own right, by a Victorian man of le� ers who was on in� mate terms with writers including Dante Gabriel Rosse� , Walter Pater, and George Meredith – and the Fiona Macleod le� ers, which bring to life Sharp’s intriguing “second self”. With an introduc� on and detailed notes by William F. Halloran, this richly rewarding collec� on off ers a wonderful insight into the literary landscape of the � me, while also inves� ga� ng a strange and underappreciated phenomenon of late-nineteenth-century English literature. It is essen� al for scholars of the period, and it is an illumina� ng read for anyone interested in authorship and iden� ty. As with all Open Book publica� ons, this en� re book is available to read for free on the publisher’s website. Printed and digital edi� ons, together with supplementary digital material, can also be found here: www.openbookpublishers.com Cover image: Photograph of William Sharp, 1894 Cover design: Anna Ga� book ebooke and OA edi� ons also available OPEN ACCESS OBP WILLIAM F. HALLORAN https://www.openbookpublishers.com ©2020 William F. Halloran OPEN ACCESS This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: William F. Halloran, The Life and Letters of William Sharp and “Fiona Macleod”. Volume 2: 1855–1894. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2020. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0196 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https:// doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0196#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/ All external links were active upon publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Updated digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0196#resources Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-869-3 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-870-9 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-871-6 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-872-3 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-873-0 ISBN Digital (XML): 978-1-78374-874-7 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0196 Cover image: “Mr William Sharp: from a photograph by Frederick Hollyer: The Chap-book, September 15, 1894”, Wikimedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:William_Sharp_1894.jpg#/media/File:William_Sharp_1894.jpg Cover design: Anna Gatti. Chapter Thirteen Life: July–December, 1895 For the first three weeks of July, Sharp was “wildly busy” in London, writing and negotiating with Herbert Stone about American editions of The Gypsy Christ and Other Tales (by W. S.) and Pharais and The Sin- Eater (by F. M.). He told Stone that his arrangement with Elkin Mathews specified Stone and Kimble had the right to publish another collection by Sharp, Ecce Puella and Other Prose Imaginings, in America, and the book was issued simultaneously by the two publishers in November. On July 5, he and Elizabeth went to Hindhead in Haslemere, Surrey to spend the weekend with the Grant Allens — which Sharp, in a letter to J. Stanley Little, called “a brief respite.” In a letter thanking Mrs. Allen for a very enjoyable time, Sharp assured her she need not be concerned about a rumor floating through London involving her husband and a “literary Parisian.” Sharp must have mentioned the rumor during the weekend since he was anxious to assure Mrs. Allen it would soon pass. Most people, he wrote, knew Allen had been in Paris not with a French woman named Belloc, but with his wife. Sharp’s focus on this rumor is notable given the likelihood that he himself was recently in Paris with a woman who was not his wife. In an interesting postscript, Sharp declared the publisher John Lane “should be careful how he speaks,” and advised Allen “not to give himself away.” Having received the manuscript of Allen’s The Woman Who Did and agreed to publish it, Lane let it be known Allen was its author. Allen intended to publish the novel pseudonymously, and Sharp advised him to stick with that intent despite Lane’s indiscretion. When the novel appeared several months later, its author was Grant Allen. The book attracted a great deal of attention, positive and negative, and made its author both famous and infamous. Soon after it appeared, Victoria © William F. Halloran, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0196.02 72 The Life and Letters of William Sharp and "Fiona Macleod". Vol. 2 Fig. 5. “The Croft,” Grant Allen’s House in Hindhead, Haslemere, Surrey (1906). © The Francis Frith Collection, https://www.francisfrith.com/hindhead/ hindhead-grant-allen-s-house-1906_55569 Crosse produced The Woman Who Didn’t, and Mrs. Lovett Cameron produced The Man Who Didn’t. The woman in one and the man in the other adhered closely to the norms of Victorian society. Allen’s woman believed women should throw off the shackles of male dominance and assert their equal rights, views shared by Sharp. In recommending Allen publish pseudonymously, Sharp knew the book would generate a good deal of outrage. The novel has recently emerged from obscurity as an important contribution to the fin de siècle feminist movement known as the “New Woman.” The Paris rumor, Sharp’s concern about Lane’s indiscretion, and the negative response to Allen’s novel offer a glimpse of the self-reflective and interconnected London publishing scene in the 1890s. Allen shared Sharp’s interest in authorial deception. He published several books as the work of invented males, and in 1897 he issued The Type-Writer Girl as the work of a woman, Olive Pratt Rayner. By that time, he knew Fiona Macleod was William Sharp, and Sharp’s use of a female pseudonym may have encouraged him to follow suit. In 1895, Chapter Thirteen 73 however, Sharp worried Allen might learn the truth and not keep the secret. Writing to Allen on July 15 as Fiona, he made a “small request.” If Allen intended to write anything about her Mountain Lovers, she hoped he would “not hint playfully at any other authorship having suggested itself.” She continued, “And, sure, it will be a pleasure to me if you will be as scrupulous with Mr. Meredith or anyone else, in private, as in public, if chance should ever bring my insignificant self into any chit- chat.” Sharp was especially concerned that George Meredith not be apprised of Fiona’s identity. He had praised her work and Sharp thought he might lose his friendship if he discovered Sharp had deceived him. Fiona ended her letter by telling Allen she looked forward to meeting him “when she came south in late Autumn.” Sharp may have planned to take Edith Rinder, posing as Fiona, to meet Allen, just as he would take her to meet Meredith. Sharp was also worried about finding time to prepare the lectures he promised for Patrick Geddes’s Summer School in August, “over 70,000 words to write in 10 days or so.” On July 13, he found time to go down to the Burford Bridge Hotel in Surrey for a dinner meeting of the Omar Khayyam Club, an organization of literary figures dedicated to the pleasures of good wine and food. Many important writers, including Grant Allen, attended, chief among them George Meredith who was the guest of honor (Memoir, p. 246). He was lured to the dinner by his friend Edward Clodd, the club’s president, and arrived only for the dessert course.