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William Sharp and "Fiona Macleod" at a discounted rate.
What
an achievement! It is a major work. The letters taken together with the
excellent introductory sections - so balanced and judicious and
informative - what emerges is an amazing picture of William Sharp the
man and the writer which explores just how fascinating a figure he is.
Clearly a major reassessment is due and this book could make it happen.
—Review of The Life and Letters of William Sharp and "Fiona Macleod", Andrew Hook, Emeritus Bradley Professor of English and American Literature, Glasgow University
The three volumes
of the Sharp/Macleod letters edited by William F. Halloran mark a major
intervention in our understanding of Sharp, shedding light on his life,
on his literary networks, and on Macleod’s literary development.
Through decades of research and his detailed editorial apparatus
(including lengthy introductions to each year of Sharp’s life), Halloran
not only contextualises the surviving letters but unlocks and
interprets many otherwise opaque details within them, such as Sharp’s
coded references to his muse and the inspiration for Macleod, the writer
Edith Wingate Rinder. As such, these volumes provide the most detailed
portrait available on Sharp, his networks and movements, and how Fiona
Macleod came to be.
—Review of The Life and Letters of William Sharp and "Fiona Macleod", Michael Shaw, University of Stirling, "Moulding A Persona: The Life and Letters of William Sharp and Fiona Macleod," Studies in Scottish Literature, Vol. 47: Iss. 1, 178–181.
The three volumes
of William Sharp’s letters are "meticulously and fully annotated,
handsomely produced and illustrated. For each "Chapter” of letters
(delineated by years or parts of years), Halloran writes a biographical
essay, drawing
on the letters and their notes and the memoir of Sharp by his wife, to
write in effect a new and compelling, if narrowly sourced, biography of
Sharp. Halloran includes biographical readings of works by Sharp and
Macleod and the narratives move along smartly
and lucidly, helping to give the letters their context and to flesh out
Sharp and his times. Any student of late Victorian England will benefit
from immersion in Sharp’s life and letters.
—Review of The Life and Letters of William Sharp and "Fiona Macleod", Terry L. Meyers, The College of William and Mary, Nineteenth-Century Prose, Volume 49, Number 1, Spring 2022.
William Sharp (1855-1905) conducted one of the most audacious literary deceptions of his or any time. A Scottish poet, novelist, biographer, and editor, he began in 1893 to write critically and commercially successful books under the name Fiona Macleod who became far more than a pseudonym. Enlisting his sister to provide the Macleod handwriting, he used the voluminous Fiona correspondence to fashion a distinctive personality for a talented, but remote and publicity-shy woman. Sometimes she was his cousin and other times his lover, and whenever suspicions arose, he vehemently denied he was Fiona. For more than a decade he duped not only the general public but such literary luminaries as George Meredith, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, William Butler Yeats, and E. C. Stedman.
Drawing extensively on his letters, his wife Elizabeth Sharp’s Memoir, and accounts by friends and associates, this biography provides a lucid and intimate account of William Sharp’s life, from his rejection of the dour religion of his Scottish boyhood, his turn to spiritualism, to his role in the Scottish Celtic Revival in the mid-nineties. The biography illuminates his wide network of close male and female friendships, through which he developed advanced ideas about the place of women in society, the constraints of marriage, the fluidity of gender identity, and the complexity of the human psyche. Uniquely this biography reveals the autobiographical content of the writings of Fiona Macleod, the remarkable extent to which Sharp used the feminine pseudonym to disguise his telling and retelling the complex story of his extramarital love affair with a beautiful and brilliant woman.
The biography illuminates not only the talented and conflicted William Sharp, but also the cultural landscape of Great Britain in the late-nineteenth century. From late Pre-Raphaelitism through the "yellow nineties” and on to the excesses of the early twentieth century, Sharp dabbled in all the movements that comprised what some have called the Age of Decadence.
William Sharp and "Fiona Macleod”: A Life
William F. Halloran | February 2022
474 | 79 Colour Images | 6.14" x 9.21" (234 x 156 mm)
ISBN Paperback: 9781800643260
ISBN Hardback: 9781800643277
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781800643284
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781800643291
ISBN Digital ebook (azw3): 9781800643307
ISBN Digital (XML): 9781800643314
ISBN Digital (HTML): 9781800646636
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0276
Categories: BIC: BJ (Diaries, letters and journals), DS (Literature: history and criticism), DSK (Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers), DSC (Literary studies: poetry and poets), 3JH (c. 1800 to c. 1900); BISAC: BIO007000 (BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary Figures), BIO025000 (BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Editors, Journalists, Publishers), HIS010000 (HISTORY / Europe / General), HIS015060 (HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / Victorian Era (1837-1901)), LCO011000 (LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Letters); OCLC Number: 1302006529.
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface Download
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Chapter One Download
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Chapter Two Download
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Chapter Three Download
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Chapter Four Download
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Chapter Five Download
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Chapter Six Download
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Chapter Seven Download
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Chapter Eight Download
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Chapter Nine Download
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Chapter Ten Download
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Chapter Eleven Download
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Chapter Twelve Download
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Chapter Thirteen Download
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Chapter Fourteen Download
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Chapter Fifteen Download
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Chapter Sixteen Download
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Chapter Seventeen Download
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Chapter Eighteen Download
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Chapter Nineteen Download
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Chapter Twenty Download
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Chapter Twenty-One Download
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Chapter Twenty-Two Download
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Chapter Twenty-Three Download
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Chapter Twenty-Four Download
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Chapter Twenty-Five Download
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Appendix 1: William Butler Yeats and Elizabeth Amelia Sharp Download
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Appendix 2: Catherine Ann Janvier and Roselle Shields Download
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Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
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