Website of the Week (WoW) #117: The William Sharp “Fiona Macleod” Archive

Website of the Week (WoW) #117: The William Sharp “Fiona Macleod” Archive

Who were William Sharp and Fiona Macleod? The same person. Scottish author William Sharp decided to write a romance under a female pseudonym and found he had to keep up the fiction that Fiona was a real person in order to write more books under that name. Here’s Sharp’s correspondence under both his own name–with people such as Thomas Hardy, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Butler Yeats–and under Fiona’s. Through his Fiona letters, he used his literary skill to create a persona that endured until his death 10 years later.


The William Sharp “Fiona Macleod” Archive | Institute of English Studies
www.ies.sas.ac.uk

Website of the Week (WoW) #117: The William Sharp “Fiona Macleod” Archive

Who were William Sharp and Fiona Macleod? The same person. Scottish author William Sharp decided to write a romance under a female pseudonym and found he had to keep up the fiction that Fiona was a real person in order to write more books under that name. Here’s Sharp’s correspondence under both his own name–with people such as Thomas Hardy, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Butler Yeats–and under Fiona’s. Through his Fiona letters, he used his literary skill to create a persona that endured until his death 10 years later.


The William Sharp “Fiona Macleod” Archive | Institute of English Studies
www.ies.sas.ac.uk