P.B. Shelley’s Fin-de-Siècle Reception in Scotland: The Case of William Sharp/Fiona Macleod

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the reception of P.B. Shelley in fin-de-siècle Scotland, with regard to the work of William Sharp (1855–1905). Firstly, it will compare his Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1887) with other existing biographies in order to evaluate its degree of reliability: indeed, as Theresa Kelley has pointed out, despite a great deal of information, many biographies of Shelley are unreliable, such as those by Thomas Jefferson Hogg (1858) and Edward John Trelawny (1858, revised and expanded in 1878). Secondly, this study will look at how the work of P.B. Shelley influenced Sharp’s oeuvre: specifically, it will focus on The Washer of the Ford and Other Legendary Moralities, published in 1896 under the female pseudonym of Fiona Macleod. In this respect, I will consider the intertextual references to P.B. Shelley (e.g. On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery, 1819) as well as the ways in which the subject matter challenged common assumptions about the relationship between gender and genre: as Thomas Janvier stated soon after its publication, The Washer of the Ford was “not impossible for a woman to write, but unlikely”.