Life and Career
White was born in Bedford and educated at Bedford Modern School. His father, William White, a member of the Nonconformist community of the Bunyan Meeting, moved the family 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, his son collected the writings and later released them as The Inner Life of the House of Commons in 1897. White 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 with three autobiographical novels, supposedly edited by one 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, share a power and style which must always give his works a place of their own in the literary history of their time. George Orwell described Mark Rutherford's Deliverance as 'one of the best novels written in English'. Bedford now has a school named after him (see Mark Rutherford School). A blue plaque commemorates White at 19 Park Hill in Carshalton.
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