“Should the secret be found out, Fiona dies.” — William Sharp | V2Melody

“Should the secret be found out, Fiona dies.”

His fear that exposure would kill the second self · Conversation, as recorded by Elizabeth Sharp

About William Sharp

William Sharp

12 September 1855–12 December 1905

William Sharp was born on 12 September 1855 in Paisley, Renfrewshire, at a time when Scotland’s industrial towns were expanding rapidly but remained surrounded, in memory and imagination, by older rural worlds. He would become one of the most energetic and versatile literary figures of the late Victorian period: a…

More by William Sharp

Poems by William Sharp

More remarks by William Sharp

“A group of intimate letters will probably give us more insight into the inner nature of a man than any number of hypothetical pros and cons on the part of a biographer.”

Why he trusted letters over formal lives · Quoted by Elizabeth Sharp as his own words

“If ever a book came out of the depths of a life it is this.”

Claiming the work as lived, not invented · Letter on The Dominion of Dreams

“To betray publicly the private life and constrained ideal of that inward self for a reward's sake would be a poor collapse.”

Refusing money and fame if they cost Fiona's isolation · Letter to Alexander Hood