Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Sharp, William
SHARP, WILLIAM, writing also under the pseudonym of Fiona Macleod (1855–1905), romanticist, born at Paisley, on 12 Sept. 1855, was eldest son of David Galbraith Sharp, partner in a mercantile house, by his wife Katherine, eldest daughter of William Brooks, Swedish vice-consul at Glasgow. The Sharp family came originally from near Dunblane, his mother was partly of Celtic descent, but he owed his peculiar Celtic predilections either to the stories and songs of his Highland nurse or to visits three or four months each year to the shores of the western highlands. After receiving his early education at home he went to Blair Lodge school, from which with some companions he ran away thrice, the last time in a vain attempt to get to sea as stowaways at Grangemouth. In his twelfth year the family removed to Glasgow, and he went as day scholar to the Glasgow Academy. At the University of Glasgow, which he entered in 1871, he showed ability in the class of English literature; but it was mainly through access to the library that he found the university of advantage.
After spending a month or two with a band of gypsies, he was placed by his father, in 1874, in a lawyer's office in Glasgow, mainly with a view to discipline. While faithful to his office duties, he devoted himself to reading, the theatres, and similar diversions, allowing himself but four hours' sleep. After the death of his father in 1876 consumption threatened, and he went on a sailing voyage to Australia. Although he enjoyed a tour in the interior, the colonist's rough life was uncongenial, and he returned to Scotland resolved to 'be a poet and write about Mother Nature and her inner mysteries.' Without means or prospects, he was about to join the Turkish army against Russia in 1878 when a friend procured him a clerkship in London at the City of Melbourne Bank. Meanwhile he began to contribute verses to periodicals, and in 1881 he had the 'extraordinary good fortune' of obtaining from Sir Noel Paton an introduction to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who encouraged him with kindly criticism and advice. Through Rossetti he obtained access to many 'literary houses' (see Life, p. 53). Failing to satisfy the requirements of the bank, he obtained a temporary post in the Fine Art Society's gallery in Bond Street; but soon depending wholly on his pen for a livelihood, he often ran risk of starvation.
At the end of 1882 Sharp wrote a short life of Rossetti (who died in April 1882). In 1882, too, appeared a volume of poems, ’The Human Inheritance,' which obtained some recognition and led to an invitation from the editor of ’Harper's Magazine' for other poems, which brought him 40l. A cheque for 200l. sent him by an unknown friend enabled him to study art in Italy for five months (1883–4). He contributed a series of articles on Etruscan cities to the 'Glasgow Herald,' and was appointed art critic to the paper. In 1884 he married his cousin and published a second volume of verse, 'Earth's Voices,' vividly impressionist, but somewhat diffuse. In 1884 he became editor of the 'Canterbury Poets,' contributing himself editions of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1885), English Sonnets (1886), American Sonnets (1889), and Great Odes (1890). For a series of 'Biographies of Great Writers' he wrote on Shelley (1887), Heine (1888), and Browning (1890). He also published 'The Sport of Chance' (1888), a sensational story, for the 'People's Friend'; contributed boys' stories to 'Young Folks,' which he edited in 1887; and published 'Romantic Ballads and Poems of Phantasy' (1888; 2nd edit. 1889), fluently fanciful but lacking in finish, and 'The Children of To-morrow' (1889), a romantic tale, in which he voiced his impatience of conventionality.
A visit in the autumn of 1889 to the United States and Canada reawakened his desire to wander. After a stay of some months in the summer of 1890 in Scotland and a torn: through Germany, he went in the late autumn to Rome, where he wrote a series of impressionist unrhymed poems in irregular metre, 'Sospiri di Roma,' printed for private circulation in 1891. In the spring of that year he left Italy for Provence on the way to London, where he completed the 'life and Letters of Joseph Severn' (published in 1892). Subsequently at Stuttgart he collaborated with the American novelist, Blanche Willis Howard, in a novel, 'A Fellowe and his Wife' (published in 1892). In the winter of 1891–2 he was again in America, when through an introduction from his friend, the American poet, E. C. Stedman, he had an interview with Walt Whitman. He also arranged for the publication in America of his 'Romantic Ballads' and 'Sospiri di Roma' in one volume, under the title 'Flower o' the Vine' (New York, 1892). The spring of 1892 was spent in Paris and the summer in London; and in the autumn he rented Phenice Croft, a cottage in Sussex, where, probably under the impulse of the Whitman visit and in a fit of irresponsible high spirits, he projected the ’Pagan Review,' edited by himself as W. H. Brooks and wholly written by himself under various pseudonyms. Only one number appeared; and, owing to his wife's unsatisfactory health, he set himself to the completion of two stories for 'Young Folks,' in order to obtain money to spend the winter in North Africa. Returning to England in the spring of 1893, he, while busy with articles and stories for the magazines, prepared a series of dramatic interludes, entitled 'Vistas' — 'vistas of the inner life of the human soul, psychic episodes' (published 1894).
At Rome in 1890 he began a friendship with a lady who, 'because of her beauty, her strong sense of fife and of the joy of ’life,' stood as 'symbol of the heroic women of Greek and Celtic days, . . . unlocked new doors 'within him, and put him ' in touch with ancestral memories' (Life, p. 223). Sharp thenceforth devoted himself to a new land of literary work, penning much mystical prose and verse under the pseudonym of 'Fiona Macleod,' whose identity with himself he carefully concealed. Although in this phase of his literary production there was no collaboration with the lady of his idealism, he yet believed 'that without her there would have been no Fiona Macleod.' Much of the 'Fiona' literature was written under the influence of a kind of mesmeric or spiritual trance, or was the record of such trances.
The first of the books which Sharp wrote under the pseudonym of 'Fiona Macleod' was begun at Phenice Croft in 1893. It appeared in 1894 as 'Pharais: a Romance of the Isles,' and Sharp declared it to have been written 'with the pen dipped in the very ichor of my life.' The 'Fiona' series was continued in 1895 in ' The Mountain Lovers,' 'more elemental still' (1895), and ’The Sin Eater,' consisting of Celtic tales and myths 'recaptured in dreams ' (1896). The latter volume was published by Patrick Geddes and Colleagues, a firm established in Edinburgh by Professor Geddes, with Sharp as literary adviser, for the publication of Celtic literature and works on science. There quickly succeeded 'The Washer of the Ford' (1896), a collection of tales and legendary moralities; 'Green Fire,' a Breton romance (1896), a portion of which, entitled 'The Herdsman,' was included in the 'Dominion of Dreams' (1899; revised American edit. 1901; German trans, Leipzig, 1905); 'From the Hills of Dream,' poems and 'prose rhythms' (Edinb. 1896; new edit. Lond. 1907); 'The Laughter of Peterkin,' a Christmas book of Celtic tales for children (1897); and 'The Divine Adventure; Iona; By Sundown Shores' (1900), a series of essays. A Celtic play, by 'Fiona,' 'The House of Usna,' was performed by the Stage Society at the Globe Theatre on 29 April 1900; and after its appearance in the 'National Review' on 1 July was issued in book form in America in 1903. Another drama, 'The Immortal Hour,' was printed in the 'Fortnightly Review' (Nov. 1900; reissued posthumously in America in 1907 and in London in 1908). 'Fiona' was also a contributor of articles to periodicals, many of which were collected, as 'The Winged Destiny' (1904) and ' Where the Forest murmurs ' (1906). Selections of 'Fiona' tales appeared in the Tauchnitz series as 'Wind and Wave' (Leipzig, 1902; German trans. Leipzig, 1905; Danish trans. Stockholm, 1910), and as 'The Sunset of Old Tales' (1905). A uniform edition of 'Fiona's' works was published in England in 1910.
The secret of Sharp's responsibilities for the 'Fiona' literature was well kept in his lifetime. He sedulously encouraged the popular assumption that 'Fiona Macleod' was a young lady endowed with 'the dreamy Celtic genius.' Sharp contributed to 'Who's Who' a fictitious memoir of 'Fiona Macleod,' describing her favourite recreations as 'boating, hill-climbing, and hstening,' and he corresponded with her admiring readers through the hand of his sister. Educated Highland Celts detected in the books the imperfection of the supposed lady's Celtic equipment. While her work reflected the influence of old Celtic paganism, it was chiefly coloured by a rapturous worship of nature and mirrored the insistent vividness and weirdness of dreams.
Meanwhile Sharp, under his own name, found it needful, both for pecuniary reasons and for the preservation of the 'Fiona' mystery, to be as productive as before. Fiction mainly occupied him. Of two volumes of short stories, one, 'The Gypsy Christ,' published in America in 1895, was reissued in 1896 in England as 'Madge o' the Pool,' and the other, 'Ecce Puella,' appeared in London in 1896. Later works of fiction were 'Wives in Exile,' a comedy in romance (Boston, Mass. 1896; London 1898) and 'Silence Farm,' a tale of the Lowlands (1899). With Mrs. Sharp he edited in 1896 'Lyra Celtica,' an anthology of Celtic poetry, with introduction and notes; and there followed 'The Progress of Art in the Century' (1902; 2nd edit. 1906) and 'Literary Geography' (from the 'Pall Mall Magazine') (1904; 2nd edit. 1907). In 1896–7 he was also editor of a quarterly periodical, the ' Evergreen,' issued by the Grades firm. Two volumes of papers, critical and reminiscent, containing some of the best work of William Sharp, are included in a reissue of some of his writings (1912).
The 'Fiona' development, implying the 'continual play of the two forces in him, or of the two sides of his nature,' produced ’a tremendous strain on his physical and mental resources, and at one time, 1897–8, threatened him with a complete nervous collapse' (Life, p. 223). He found rellef in travel and change of scene: the Highlands, America, Rome, Sicily, Greece, were all included in a constantly recurring itinerary. But his restless energy gradually undermined his constitution. After a cold caught during a drive in the Alcantara valley in Sicily he died at Castle Maniace, the home of his friend, the Duke of Brontë, to the west of Mount Etna, on 14 Dec. 1905. He was buried in a woodland cemetery on the hillside, where an Iona cross, carved in marble, has been erected. He left a letter, to be communicated to his friends, explaining why he found it necessary not to disclose his identity with 'Fiona.'
On 31 Oct. 1884 Sharp married Elizabeth, daughter of his father's elder brother, Thomas Sharp, by Agnes, daughter of Robert Farquharson of Breda and Allargue; he became secretly pledged to her in September 1875. There were no children of the marriage.
Sharp was tall, handsome, fair-haired, and blue-eyed. A painted portrait of him by Daniel Wehrschmidt and a pastel by Charles Ross are in the possession of his widow. There are also etchings by William Strang and Sir Charles Holroyd.
[Memoir by his wife, Elizabeth A. Sharp, 1910; Fiona Macleod, by Mr. Ernest Rhys, in Century Mag., May 1907; Academy, 16 Dec. 1905; Dublin Review, Oct. 1911; information from Mrs. Sharp.]