Call Number:

C1118

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 1 box
• 0.2 linear feet

Language:

English

Date:

1887-1907 (inclusive)

Creator:

Princeton University. Library. Special Collections and Sharp, William, 1855-1905

Form:

Correspondence -- 19th century, Manuscripts --- 19th century., Photographs--19th century., and Poems -- 19th century.

Abstract:

Consists of selected correspondence and manuscripts of the Scottish author William Sharp, who is best known for the mystical tales of the Celtic world that he published under the pen name "Fiona Macleod."

William Sharp was a Scottish writer of poetry and literary biography who, from 1893, wrote under the name of Fiona MacLeod, a pseudonym kept secret during most of his life. Sharp was also an editor of the poetry of Matthew Arnold, Walter Scott, Algernon Swinburne, and others. He was introduced to Dante Gabriel Rossetti and joined the Rossetti literary group. In 1884 he married his cousin Elizabeth, and from 1891 devoted himself full time to writing and traveling widely. About this time, he developed a romantic attachment to Edith Wingate Rinder (E.W.R.), another writer of the Celtic Edinburgh circle. It was to Rinder he attributed the inspiration for his writings as Fiona Macleod, and to whom he dedicated his first "Macleod" novel, Pharais (1894), and subsequently The Mountain Lovers (1895), and The Washer Of The Ford (1896), as well as two plays, The House of Usna (1903) and The Immortal Hour (1908). Sharp proceeded to invent a life for Fiona Macleod through her publications, by claiming she was his cousin and that he was her agent, and through letters he wrote in her name or letters he drafted and sent to his sister, Mary Sharp, to copy and mail. Under his own name Sharp wrote literary biographies, poems, including the volume Earth's Voices (1884), and novels, notably Silence Farm (1899). With his wife he compiled the anthology Lyra Celtica (1896). In 1910, Elizabeth Sharp published a biographical memoir attempting to explain the creative necessity behind the deception, and she edited a complete edition of his works.

The collection consists of selected correspondence (letters, notecards, and postcards), poetry, and a typed essay, all signed either by William Sharp or under his pseudonym, "Fiona Macleod." The bulk of the correspondence is between Sharp and the novelist James Stanley Little. Sharp talks about his "cousin" Fiona Macleod and her new book, Pharais, his travels, his health, his financial problems, and about Hall Caine and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Included are letters to the English publisher John Lane regarding dinner invitations, jobs, books published, engravings in his books, and letters to the writer Coulson Kernahan. There also are letters from Sharp to the editors of Harper's Magazine and the Quarterly Review of Literature in New York regarding his essays and poems.

The collection includes six letters of Fiona Macleod. One to the editor of the London Daily Chronicle gives the address of her private secretary and typist, who is also the sister of her cousin (i.e., Mary Sharp). Another (to "Dear Sir") states that she does not consent to reproductions of her portrait. There is also a letter sent to a Rev. Wilkins Rees from Mary Sharp accompanied by a photograph of her, on the verso of which she writes that this is a portrait of Fiona Macleod's sister who did all the writing and typing for her. Also included is correspondence of Elizabeth Sharp to James Stanley Little and miscellaneous correspondence and autographs of Mrs. Sharp's brother, Robert Farquharson Sharp.

Holograph poems include "On Mont St. Victoire," "Buon' Riposo," "Innismore and London," and "On the Tidings from Venice." The typescript of a two-part essay labeled "The Irish Muse," which was published in the North American Review (1904), contains corrections and annotations by Mary Sharp. Also included are a poem titled "A Dream" (from With the Wild Geese, 1902) by Emily Lawless, a letter to Mr. Gilman, and a newspaper clipping of an obituary of the author Mrs. Thomas A. Janvier (Catherine Ann Drinker, a friend of Elizabeth Sharp), which were all tipped in a book written by Fiona Macleod.

Folders are organized in alphabetical order by correspondent.