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 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WILLIAM SHARP AND “FIONA MACLEOD” VOL. II The Life and Letters of William Sharp and “Fiona Macleod” VOLUME II: 1895–1899 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. To the memory of Noel and Rosemarie Sharp and Esther Mona Harvey Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 Chapter Twelve: January–June, 1895 11 Chapter Thirteen: July–December, 1895 71 Chapter Fourteen: January–June, 1896 141 Chapter Fifteen: July–December, 1896 215 Chapter Sixteen: 1897 283 Chapter Seventeen: 1898 357 Chapter Eighteen: January–June, 1899 417 Chapter Nineteen: July–December, 1899 483 Endnotes 527 List of Illustrations 613 Appendix 617 Acknowledgements William Sharp’s wife and first cousin, Elizabeth Amelia Sharp, became his literary executor when he died in 1905. Upon her death in 1932, the executorship passed to her brother, Robert Farquharson Sharp. When he passed away in 1945, that role fell to his son, Noel Farquharson Sharp, who, like his father, was a keeper of printed books in the British Museum. When he died in 1978, the executorship fell to his wife, Rosemarie Sharp, who lived until 2011 when it passed to her son, Robin Sharp. I am heavily indebted to Noel and Rosemarie Sharp for their assistance and friendship. They granted me permission to publish William Sharp’s writings and shared their memories of his relatives and friends. I am especially grateful to Noel Sharp for introducing me in 1963 to Edith Wingate Rinder’s daughter, Esther Mona Harvey, a remarkably talented woman whose friendship lasted until her death in 1993. Her recollections of her mother, who played a crucial role in the lives of William and Elizabeth Sharp, were invaluable. Through many years of my involvement with an obscure and complex man named William Sharp, my wife — Mary Helen Griffin Halloran — has been endlessly patient, encouraging and supportive. This work has benefited greatly from her editorial skills. I am also grateful to a succession of English graduate students at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee who assisted me in transcribing and annotating William Sharp’s letters: Edward Bednar, Ann Anderson Allen, Richard Nanian, and Trevor Russell. Without the support I received from the College of Letters and Science and the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee this project would not have seen the light of day. The Appendix lists the institutions that have made copies of their Sharp/Macleod letters available and granted permission to transcribe, edit, and include them in this volume. It also lists the letters held by x The Life and Letters of William Sharp and "Fiona Macleod". Vol. 2 each institution. Without these libraries, their benefactors, and their competent staffs, a project of this sort — which has stretched over half a century — would have been impossible. Finally, this project would not have come to fruition had it not been for Warwick Gould, Emeritus Professor and Founding Director of the Institute for English Studies at the University of London. It was he who supported the first iteration of the Sharp letters as a website supported by the Institute, and it was he who suggested Open Book Publishers as a possible location for an expanded edition of The Life and Letters of William Sharp and Fiona Macleod. His support and friendship have been a beacon of light. This is the second volume of a three-volume work which presents Sharp’s life from 1895 through 1899. The first volume rages from 1855, the year of his birth, through 1894; and the third from 1900 through 1905, the year of his death. Introduction1 William Sharp was born in Paisley, near Glasgow, in 1855. His father, a successful merchant, moved his family to Glasgow in 1867; his mother, Katherine Brooks, was the daughter of the Swedish Vice Consul in Glasgow. A talented, adventurous boy who read voraciously, he spent summers with his family in the Inner Hebrides where he developed a strong attachment to the land and the people. In the summer of 1863, his paternal aunt brought her children from London to vacation with their cousins. Months short of his eighth birthday, Sharp formed a bond with one of those cousins, Elizabeth Sharp, a bright girl who shared many of his enthusiasms. Their meeting led eventually to their engagement (in 1875) and their marriage (in 1884). After finishing school at the Glasgow Academy in 1871, Sharp studied literature for two years at Glasgow University, an experience that fed his desire to become a writer. Following his father’s sudden death in August 1876, he fell ill and sailed to Australia to recover his health and look for suitable work. Finding none, he enjoyed a warm and adventurous summer and returned in June 1877 to London where he spent several weeks with Elizabeth and her friends. A year later he settled in London and began to establish himself as a poet, journalist, and editor. Through Elizabeth’s contacts and those he made among writers, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, he became by the end of the 1880s a well-established figure in the literary and intellectual life of the city. During this decade he published biographical studies of Rossetti, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Robert Browning; three books of poetry; two novels; many articles and reviews; and several editions of other writers.