MARK

See also:

• MARK RUTHERFORD
• RUTHERFORD, WILLIAM GUNION (1853–1907)

RUTHERFORD  , the pen-name of William Hale White, English author, who was born at Bedford about 183o . His father, William White, a member of the nonconformist community of the Bunyan Meeting, removed to London, where he was well known as a doorkeeper of the House of Commons; he wrote sketches of parliamentary life for the Illustrated Times, papers afterwards collected by his son as The Inner Life of the House of Commons (1897) . The son was educated for the Congregational ministry, but the development of his views prevented his taking up that career, and he became a clerk in the admiralty . He had already served an apprenticeship to journalism before he made his name as a novelist by the three books " edited by Reuben Shapcott," The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford (1881), Mark Rutherford's Deliverance (1885), and The Revolution in Tanner's Lane (1887) . Under his own name he translated Spinoza's Ethic (1883) . Later books are Miriam's Schooling, and other Papers (1890), Catherine Furze (2 vols., 1893), Clara Hopgood (1896), Pages from a Journal, with other Papers (1900), and John Bunyan (1905) . Though for a long time little appreciated by the public, his novels—particularly the earlier ones-have a power and style which must always give his works a place of their own in the literary history of their time .