Sharp was the only son of Thomas Sharp of Coventry, hatter, was born on 7 November 1770, in a house in Smithford Street, Coventry, distinguished by the effigy of ‘Peeping Tom.’ He was educated at the free grammar school, and on his father's death, in 1784, carried on the business.

In 1824, appeared his ‘Guide to Coventry,’ and in 1825 he published his chief work, ‘A Dissertation on the Pageants, or Dramatic Mysteries, anciently performed at Coventry by the Trading Companies of that City,’ a treatise of great interest from its bearing on the early history of the stage.

In 1834, Sharp relinquished his business altogether and removed to Leamington, where he was in constant communication with fellow antiquaries, such as Palgrave, Dawson Turner, Francis Douce, William Salt, and John Britton.

Prefixed is a portrait of Sharp etched by Mrs. Dawson Turner, after a drawing made by J. S. Cotman in 1823.

A part from his topographical collections relating to Warwickshire (the majority of which, in manuscript form, were purchased in 1834 by William Staunton of Longbridge House, near Warwick), Sharp was an assiduous collector of coins, and he was an authority on provincial coins and tokens.

He drew up a valuable ‘Catalogue of Provincial Copper Coins, Tokens, Tickets, and Medalets’ of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from the collection of Sir George Chetwynd at Grendon Hall; of this sixty copies were printed in quarto in 1834.

One of Sharp's coins, a gold half-florin of Edward III, of which only two specimens are known, is now in the British Museum.