Born at Sparkbrook, near Birmingham but moved to Cheshire when he was three and was educated at Birkenhead School. He would have gone to Oxford or Cambridge but was prevented by lack of means and instead joined his father’s business. Apart from entomology Sharp also painted in water-colours. His interest in insects began when he was a boy and he was for many years a member of the Lancashire and Cheshire Entomological Society. Whilst there he wrote more than 30 notes in various journals many adding species to the Liverpool list. The Coleoptera of Lancashire and Cheshire was published in 1908 after he left the area (1899) to move to London. Once in London Sharp quickly joined the ESL but his health broke down following the death of his son in the first World War in 1916., and he moved to Crowthorne in Berkshire, the site of Wellington College. It was here that he wrote Common Beetles of the Countryside (published in both one- and four-volume formats) the work for which he is best known. He also published a number of notes in EMM and Tony Drane has kindly furnished me with a copy of a paper titled The Classification of Coleoptera: Historically considered (nd but c.1888, pp. 1-21) in his library.
Sharp’s main collection comprising some 20,000 specimens, was acquired by Liverpool Museum (D.7.8.19) but destroyed by a bomb during the Second World War. Manuscript material associated with it survives and includes 3 large volumes the first of which is inscribed A Catalogue of the British Coleoptera in my collection with notes thereon and dated 20 Aug 1905. Volume 1 lists numbers 1-1164; 2: numbers 1165-2257; and 3: numbers 2258-3304. The Museum also has 2 volumes of correspondence from amongst others E.A.Newery, David Sharp, George Champion, Edward Waterhouse, Norman Joy, C.E.Tottenham, Tomlin, William Wallace and Harry Britten. A file of Museum correspondence about the collection includes a letter from the University Library, Edinburgh stating that they have no 3 of Sharp’s ms volumes ‘Collecting Days’. Further beetle collections made by Sharp are in Bolton Museum (acquired via C.E.Stott on 22 November 1891); Perth Museum; the HDO (a set of British and Irish Staphylinidae, all named by him, together with a few beetles from Asia Minor and several European localities, and two Carabidae from the Falkland Islands (Smith (1986) p.149); the Grosvenor Museum, Chester (a collection of 232 specimens from Cheshire, Flintshire and Denbighshire donated in 1892 for the Kingsley Memorial Prize of the Chester Society of Natural Science, Literature and Art. Acc nos 4035-4265 (Hancock and Pettit (1981)). There are obituaries by W.W.Fowler in EMM., 55, 1919, p.268; Ent News, 31, 1920, p.149; and Lancs and Ches. Nat., 12, 1919, pp.65-66. (MD 11/04, 2/20)