Mark Rutherford (William Hale White)
‘Mark Rutherford‘ was the pseudonym of William Hale White (1831-1913). Rutherford is generally classed as a minor Victorian novelist, and noted for his depiction of provincial dissenting life, and of the ’loss of faith’ of the Victorian period. There is much more to Hale White than this. Despite working for over thirty years as a civil servant, he wrote over a thousand newspaper articles, translated works by Spinoza, and wrote various works of literary criticism.
He has never had a wide following, but writers such as Andre Gide, D.H. Lawrence, and Arnold Bennett have all praised his work. The aim of this site is to make Mark Rutherford‘s work more widely known (particularly his journalism), and to act as a forum for discussions about Mark Rutherford.
Comments, criticisms, and especially contributions, are always welcome to
David French
Recent updates
December 2015
Letters of Philip Webb to William Hale White available via google scholar
October 2015
A new Mark Rutherford newsletter has been published. Subscribe here.
October 2014
Web site moved from www.concentric.net/~djfrench to www.davidfrench.org.uk/markrutherford
March 2014
The latest Mark Rutherford newsletter is available. It contains a 'Review of the Year's Activities' (2013) by Nick Wilde, 'Researching Mark Rutherford in the 1940s – A Letter from Wilfred Stone', 'Complaint of a Forsaken Civil Servant' by Mark Crees , 'A Very Exciting Time: Arthur Smith in search of William Hale White' by Michael Brealey , 'Dorothy Vernon White and her Help to William Hale White Biographers' by Nick Wilde, Pierre Leyris's Introduction to the French Edition of The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, introduced and translated by Nick Jacobs , a review: 'Bedford's Victorian Pilgrim – William Hale White in Context' by Michael Brealey, by Catherine Harland, and on the front cover a previously unknown photograph of The Cottage, Groombridge, the house in which Hale White died, with a note by Bob Owens.
July 2013
Nick Wilde's report of the Mark Rutherford symposium held on 22nd June.
August 2012
Michael Brealey, a member of the Society, has published a book about Mark Rutherford: Bedford's Victorian Pilgrim. It is available from the publisher's web site and from Amazon.
January 2012
Irvin Stock, author of a critical study of Hale White, has died aged 91. His obituary in the Boston Globe includes the following: "There is, of course, a sense in which any serious writer is sincere — honesty is a basic condition of his profession and some kind of truth its necessary raw material,'' he wrote in the book, "but we are rarely impelled, except perhaps in mitigation of the charge of failure, to place that word in the centre of a critical portrait. With Hale White, however, it must in fact go in the centre: It is the chief distinction of his work and the source of his finest effects.''
October 2011
Hale White's poem "This is the Night.." was on Poetry Please on Sunday 2nd October.
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