Exploring the Sexuality of William Sharp/Fiona Macleod

Abstract

William F. Halloran first became interested in William Sharp/Fiona Macleod in 1960. Six decades later sees the publication of his magnum opus on the Scottish poet (1855-1905): three volumes of his letters, meticulously and fully annotated, handsomely produced and illustrated. In the introductory matter, Halloran comes to a measured evaluation of Sharp: a unique individual who was talented, ambitious, determined to succeed as a writer, and aware of his shortcomings [...] [he was] a talented, attractive, sensitive, and conflicted man. Difficult to pin down with precision, he was immersed in the cross-currents of ideas and in the artistic and social movements of the last two decades of the nineteenth century in Great Britain and continental Europe. He participated in spiritualist efforts to affirm the existence of some form of life after death; he embraced new ideas about the place of women in society, the constraints of marriage, the fluidity of gender identity, and the complexity of the human psyche. (I.4)