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Angela V. John's biography of Evelyn Sharp will be available in paperback and hardback from April 2009, published by Manchester University Press (order from NBN International - tel.+44 (0) 1752 202301/ Email orders@nbninternational.com or from bookshops).
For details of forthcoming talks about the book (in London, Wales and elsewhere) between April and June please contact aoj@aber.ac.uk.
This is the first biography of a remarkable, witty and versatile writer who was also an
incorrigible rebel. Evelyn Sharp was born into a privileged family in 1869. Folksong and
dance expert Cecil Sharp was her brother. She became a popular writer of schoolgirl fiction
and fairy tales and contributed to the infamous ‘Yellow Book’. A ‘Manchester Guardian’
journalist for over four decades, she was the first regular contributor to its iconic
Women’s Page. Before and during the First World War she was a leading suffragette, editing
the newspaper ‘Votes for Women’. Imprisoned twice, she was the last British woman to refuse
to pay taxes because she lacked the vote. In the 1920s she worked with the Quakers in
Weimar Germany. After a long, volatile relationship with the radical war correspondent
Henry W. Nevinson, the couple married when she was sixty-three.
Evelyn Sharp’s story encapsulates the shifts in opportunities facing Victorian women who
survived into the mid-twentieth century. This rich biography draws on her diaries, letters
and many publications, vividly documenting experiences such as famine relief in Soviet
Russia, collaborating on an opera with Ralph Vaughan Williams, and daily life in wartime
Kensington. It should interest specialists in history and literature as well as anybody who
enjoys biography.
