Mark Rutherford

Rutherford, Mark 

(pen name of William Hale White). Born Dec. 22, 1831, in Bedford; died Mar. 14, 1913, in Groom-bridge. English author.

Before beginning his career as a novelist, Rutherford attended a theological college. His novels The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford (1881) and Mark Rutherford’s Deliverance (1885) depict the emergence of a consciousness that is becoming free of Victorian prejudices, religious and other. The novel The Revolution in Tanner’s Lane (1887; Russian translation, 1969) centers on the figure of a worker-printer and his path from anarchism to a conscious revolutionary struggle. One of the first proletarian works in European literature, the novel has been acclaimed by English Marxist literary criticism, especially by R. Fox. Fidelity to democratic convictions is the hallmark of Rutherford’s novels from the 1890’s, including Miriam’s Schooling and Other Papers (1890) and Catherine Furze (1893). Under his real name, William Hale White, he published translations of works by Spinoza and books on Wordsworth and Bunyan.

WORKS

Novels, vols. 1–6. London, 1923.
Letters to Three Friends. London, 1924.

REFERENCES

Istoriia angliiskoi literatury, vol. 3. Moscow, 1958.
Stock, I. William Hale White (Mark Rutherford). London, 1956.
Merton, S. Mark Rutherford (William Hale White). New York [1967]. (Bibliography on pp. 187–89.)