SHARP (William).
Ecce Puella and other Prose Imaginings.
A presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper to his cousin ‘To R. Farquharson Sharp from his friend and Cousin William Sharp’. Robert was briefly Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum, contributor of a large number of entries to the DNB, the author of some small verses, and a translator of Ibsen. ‘Ecce Puella’ is a collection of stories gathered from various magazines, combined with a reprinted revised version of Sharp’s monograph ‘On Fair Women in Painting and Poetry’. The printed dedication ‘To the Woman of Thirty’ may be a veiled reference to Mrs. Edith Wingate Rider, a Celticist, who the Sharps had met in Rome some years earlier, and who is generally credited with influencing Sharp’s decision to write under the pseudonym ‘Fiona MacLeod’.
Head and tail of spine slightly rubbed, back cover scratched and stained