Robert Harborough Sherard (3 December 1861 – 30 January 1943) was an English writer and journalist. He was a friend, and the first biographer, of Oscar Wilde, as well as being Wilde's most prolific biographer in the first half of the twentieth century.

Early life

Born on 3 December 1861 at Putney, London, England, Sherard began life as Robert Harborough Sherard Kennedy and was the son of the Reverend Bennet Sherard Calcraft Kennedy (an illegitimate son of Robert Sherard, 6th Earl of Harborough by the actress Emma Love). His mother was Jane Stanley Wordsworth, a granddaughter of the poet William Wordsworth. He dropped the surname Kennedy upon moving to Paris in late 1882 after a quarrel with his father, who cut him off from the expected family inheritance. Sherard was educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, the University of Oxford and the University of Bonn.

Career

Sherard wrote about the effects of immigration into England and his articles have been described as xenophobic and anti-semitic. Whilst he was an "outspoken anti-semitic observer of 'social problems' " he denied he was motivated by hatred of Jews.

Personal life

Sherard married three times. In 1887 he married Marthe Lipska, a daughter of the Baron de Stern. They divorced in 1906 and he married the American novelist, poet and dramatist, Irene Osgood in 1908. They divorced in 1915, and he married Alice Muriel Fiddian in 1928. He died in Ealing in west London in January 1943, aged 81.

Works

Biographies

Novels

Poetry

Whispers (1884)

Non-fiction

Autobiography

Papers

In popular culture

Footnotes