William Sharp and Fiona Macleod : A Life.
- 1 online resource (476 pages)
Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Chapter One -- Chapter Two -- Chapter Three -- Chapter Four -- Chapter Five -- Chapter Six -- Chapter Seven -- Chapter Eight -- Chapter Nine -- Chapter Ten -- Chapter Eleven -- Chapter Twelve -- Chapter Thirteen -- Chapter Fourteen -- Chapter Fifteen -- Chapter Sixteen -- Chapter Seventeen -- Chapter Eighteen -- Chapter Nineteen -- Chapter Twenty -- Chapter Twenty-One -- Chapter Twenty-Two -- Chapter Twenty-Three -- Chapter Twenty-Four -- Chapter Twenty-Five -- Appendix 1:William Butler Yeats and Elizabeth Amelia Sharp -- Appendix 2: Catherine Ann Janvier and Roselle Shields -- Bibliography -- List of Illustrations -- Index.
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.