Scottish Authors > William Sharp Novelist 1855-1905

Son of a muslin manufacturer and a mother with Scandinavian blood, William Sharp was born in Paisley on 12th September 1855 and left when aged 12 years. "Celt in heart and spirit" he was a delicate "merry and mischievous" child, also a loner with a strong imagination. From his Highland nurse, and reinforced in later life by many visits there, he learned about the Celtic sagas. He attended Glasgow University but did not graduate. Diligent but unconventional, his interests included nature, folklore and foreign languages and literature.

He found work with a lawyer, but an attack of typhoid so weakened him that he went to Australia to recuperate. Based on this visit was his first novel Sport of chance (1888).

Returned from Australia, he worked for a bank in London and on medical advice turned down the offer of a literary professorship. While in London, his move into a career in writing was influenced by the artist, Sir Joseph Noel Paton, a one-time pattern designer in Paisley. In 1884 he had married his cousin Elizabeth A Sharp, editor of Lyra Celtica. After the success of Sonnets of this century (1886), Sharp also wrote dramas and biographies of literary figures.

Following a visit to Rome he produced Sospiri di Roma (1891), poems in irregular meter. When there he became friendly with a lady whose personality symbolised to him the heroic women of Greek and Celtic days. As "Fiona MacLeod" he dedicated Pharais (1894) to her, a story full of "Celtic romance ... and the mysterious". In The Mystic's prayer (s)he asks for help:

In flame of sunrise bathe my mind

Master of the Hidden Fire

That, when I wake, clear eyed may be

My soul's desire

The Gaelic language, his nurse's tales and his friend in Rome all influenced Pharais. This was the first of his versions of the neo-Celtic legends, written as by Fiona MacLeod, whose identity only became known after Sharp's death. The Sharps themselves were childless and looked on "Fiona" as their daughter.

The "continual play of the two forces" - the literary Sharp and the Celtic dreamer MacLeod - at one time brought him near to nervous collapse. He died in Sicily on 12th December 1905 and is remembered by a Celtic Cross cut into the lava of Mount Etna. Regarded as the father figure of the Celtic Renaissance, Sharp's knowledge of Gaelic culture has been criticised. He is commemorated in his home town by a double-image portrait in Paisley's Central Library. Works by and about him, notably a Memoir by his wife, can be seen in the Local Studies Collection. Sharp's dichotomy is said to have been bridged in part by "Wilfion", a fusion of his two selves. This name was revived in 1975 when the academic publisher, Wilfion Books, was set up. The Wilfion scripts, published by them in 1980, purports to have been dictated by Sharp through a medium.

Ken Hinshalwood

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