Sharp was born in Paisley and educated at Glasgow Academy and the University of Glasgow, which he attended 1871–1872 without completing a degree. In 1872 he contracted typhoid. During 1874–5 he worked in a Glasgow law office. His health broke down in 1876 and he was sent on a voyage to Australia. In 1878 he took a position in a bank in London.
Also about this time, he developed an intensely romantic attachment to Edith Wingate Rinder, another writer of the consciously Celtic Edinburgh circle surrounding Patrick Geddes and "The Evergreen". It was to Rinder ("EWR") he attributed the inspiration for his writings as Fiona Macleod thereafter, and to whom he dedicated his first Macleod novel ("Pharais") in 1894. Sharp had a complex and ambivalent relationship with W. B. Yeats during the 1890s, as a central tension in the Celtic Revival. Yeats initially found Macleod acceptable and Sharp not, and later fathomed their identity. Sharp found the dual personality an increasing strain.
On occasions when it was necessary for "Fiona Macleod" to write to someone unaware of the dual identity, Sharp would dictate the text to his sister (Mary Beatrice Sharp), whose handwriting would then be passed off as Fiona's manuscript.[3] During his Macleod period, Sharp was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.[4] In August 1892, he published what became the only issue of the Pagan Review, in which he, under a set of pen names (including "W. H. Brooks", "W. S. Fanshawe", "George Gascoigne", "Willand Dreeme", "Lionel Wingrave", "James Marazion", "Charles Verleyne", and "Wm. Windover") argued for the establishment of a neo-paganism which would abolish gender inequality. The review was received negatively; among other things, critics wrote that its paganism was far removed from the pagan writings of the ancient world.[5] The Saturday Review wrote:
He died in 1905 at the Castello di Maniace near Bronte, in Sicily, where he was the guest of Sir Alexander Nelson Hood, 5th Duke of Bronté (1904–1937), and was buried there in the ducal cemetery. He described the duchy and aspects of its history in his Attraverso la Ducea Nelson.[6] In 1910, Elizabeth Sharp published a biographical memoir attempting to explain the creative necessity behind the deception, and edited a complete edition of his works.
Sharp took an early interest in the Belgian avant-garde and disseminated knowledge of La Jeune Belgique movement in a number of essays published in English-language literary periodicals, including two essays entitled La Jeune Belgique, a biographical and critical essay titled Maeterlinck, a reflection on Ruysbroeck and Maeterlinck and a review of Gérard Harry's production of Princess Maleine and The Intruder (1892). He translated Auguste Jenart's The Barbarian (1891) into English. His translation of Charles van Lerberghe's Les Flaireurs was published as The Night-ComersinThe Evergreen: A Northern Seasonal: Autumn in 1895.[7]
The poems of Fiona Macleod attracted the attention of composers in the first half of the 20th century as part of the Celtic Twilight movement in the UK and the US.[8] By far the best known setting was the adaptation of the verse drama The Immortal Hour as the libretto for Rutland Boughton's hugely successful opera of the same name, completed in 1914. The opera ran in London for 216 consecutive performances in 1922, and for a further 160 performances the following year, and was staged in New York City in 1926.[9] It was revived at the Sadler's Wells Theatre in London in 1953. The first recording of the complete work, sponsored by The Rutland Boughton Trust, took place in 1983 and was released the following year by Hyperion Records on CD and as a boxed vinyl set.[10]
From the Hills of Dream, Threnodies Songs and Later Poems (1901) as FM; this included the poem "The Lonely Hunter", which contains perhaps MacLeod's most famous line: Deep in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to me still, But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill. This inspired the title of Carson McCullers' debut novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
The Progress of Art in the Nineteenth century (1902)
Wind and wave: selected tales (1902)
The House of Usna (1903) play as FM
Literary Geography (1904)
The Winged Destiny: Studies in the Spiritual History of the Gael (1904) as FM and dedicated to Dr John Goodchild
Where the forest murmurs: Nature essays (1906) as FM
"William Sharp (Fiona Macleod): A Memoir" (1910, 1912) Elizabeth A. Sharp
William Sharp: "Fiona Macleod", 1855–1905 (1970) Flavia Alaya
The Sexual Tensions of William Sharp: A Study of the Birth of Fiona Macleod, Incorporating Two Lost Works, 'Ariadne in Naxos' and 'Beatrice'" (1996) Terry L. Meyers (Sharp's sexual orientation was likely bi-sexual; William Halloran's edition of Sharp's letters [see below] reverses Halloran's earlier revelation that Sharp fathered a child with Edith Rinder).
InLibrary of World's Best Literature Ancient and Modern, Thirty Volumes, Edited by Charles Dudley Warner, R. S. Peale and J. A. Hill, publishers, 1897. In Volume 6 is a section (pp. 3403–3450), devoted to Celtic literature, written by William Sharp and Ernest Rhys.
