William Sharp (engraver) - Politics and Religion

Politics and Religion

Sharpe was a republican and a friend of Thomas Paine and Horne Tooke, and became a member of the "Society for Constitutional Information. As a result of a legal dispute involving Horne Took, Sharp was questioned by the Privy council on charges relating to treason, but was eventually dismissed without punishment as merely an "enthusiast".

He became a convert to the teachings of Mesmer and Swedenborg and came under the religious influence of would-be visionary, Jacob Bryan (who worked for Sharp as a printer for a time), and millennialist prophet Richard Brothers, engraving the latter as "Prince of the Hebrews". After Brothers incarceration in an insane asylum in Islington, Sharp became an adherent of prophetess, Joanna Southcott, whom he brought from Exeter to London and kept at his own expense for a considerable time; he made a portrait drawing if her which he engraved. Despite her apparently premature death he never lost faith in her divine mission or the possibility that she would reappear, and wrote a book in her defense: "An answer to the world etc." (London, 1806).