White, William Hale, 1831-1913

English novelist.

From the description of Autograph letter signed : Park Hill, Surrey, to W.A. Knight, 1883 June 28. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 270867602

From the description of Autograph letter signed : High Wickham, Hastings, to W.A. Knight, 1896 Sept. 21. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 270867606

From the description of Autograph letter signed : "The Cottage," Groombridge, Kent, to W.A. Knight, 1904 Mar. 29. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 270867611

English philosophical writer and literary critic.

From the description of Autograph letter signed : Groombridge, Kent, to S.C. Cockerell, 1912 Jan. 12. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 270587502

Epithet: KBE; son of William Hale White

British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue : Person : Description : ark:/81055/vdc_100000001152.0x0000f1

English novelist (under the pseudonyn of Mark Rutherford), philosophical writer, literary critic, and civil servant.

From the description of Autograph letter signed : War Office, Pall Mall, [London], to Arthur Sullivan, [n.y.] May 29. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 270126268

The collection comprises 43 letters from William Hale White to Erica Storr, between 1905 and 1912, and one to her mother in 1906. William Hale White (1831-1913), novelist and philosophical writer, was educated at Bedford Modern School, and entered the Countess of Huntingdon's College at Cheshunt, passing to New College, St. John's Wood, with a view to becoming an independent minister, but was expelled from the latter for unorthodox views. He entered the Civil Service in 1854, serving from 1858 in the Admiralty, from which he retired in 1891. He lived at Groombridge, Kent, from 1903 until his death in March 1913.

His work in literature virtually began with the appearance in 1881 of The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, followed in 1885 by its sequel, Mark Rutherford's Deliverance . For the two books he invented a posthumous editor, 'Reuben Shapcott'. He maintained the pseudonyms of 'Mark Rutherford' and 'Reuben Shapcott' through the series of four novels which appeared between 1887 and 1896 and yield, with the autobiographical books, the flower of his thought on life and religion. His later imaginative work appeared in Pages from a Journal, with other Papers (1900), More Pages from a Journal (1910), and the posthumous Last Pages from a Journal (1915). (See the article by H. W. Massingham in Dictionary of National Biography, first published in 1927.)

Erica Violet Storr was born in about 1878 and died in 1962. In 1907 she married A. D. Lindsay (1879-1952), later Master of Balliol College, Oxford, founding principal of University College of North Staffordshire, and 1st Baron Lindsay of Birker.

From the guide to the Mark Rutherford Letters, 21 June 1905-29 December 1912, (University of Sussex Library)