Mark Rutherford Letters

The collection comprises 43 letters from William Hale White to Erica Storr, between 1905 and 1912, and one to her mother in 1906. The subject matter is mainly literary, with frequent reference to Erica Starr's verses which she evidently sent to Hale White.

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.

Items in the collection may be consulted for the purpose of private study and personal research, within the controlled environment and restrictions of The Keep's Reading Rooms.

Presented in 1967 by Lady Scott, the daughter of Erica Storr.

Prepared by John Farrant, August 2002.

An online catalogue is available on The Keep's website.

COPIES FOR PRIVATE STUDY: Subject to copyright, conditions imposed by owners and protecting the documents,digital copies can be made.

PUBLICATION: A reader wishing to publish material in the collection should contact the Head of Special Collections, in writing. The reader is responsible for obtaining permission to publish from the copyright owner.