[1][2] His obituary in The Times stated that the "employment of a pseudonym, and sometimes of two (for some of 'Mark Rutherford's' work was 'edited by his friend, Reuben Shapcott'), was sufficient to prove a retiring disposition, and Mr. Hale White was little before the world in person.

His father, William White, a member of the Nonconformist community of the Bunyan Meeting, became well known as a doorkeeper at the House of Commons and wrote sketches of parliamentary life for the Illustrated Times.

[13] Having worked alongside her for The Westminster Review, White was a friend of George Eliot and they both lodged at 142 Strand, London which was owned by John Chapman.

[3][7] In 1861 he began writing newspaper articles to increase his income, having met and married Harriet Arthur in 1856 at the Congregational Church in Kentish Town, and started a family.

[12] He also contributed articles on literary figures in The Contemporary Review, Macmillan's Magazine, The Spectator, The Athenaeum, The Bookman and, the nonconformist, The British Weekly, including essays on Byron, Goethe, Shelley and Dorothy Wordsworth.

He seems to be recording the revelation of a soul's experience, and in the simplicity and directness of his narrative, he is somewhat akin, to the great Russian novelistsAndré Gide, in a letter dated 4 October 1915, thanked Arnold Bennett for recommending White's works.

[22] D. H. Lawrence wrote about White's work:[23] And I have always a greater respect for Mark Rutherford: I do think he is jolly good – so thorough, so sound, and so beautiful.Claire Tomalin, the biographer of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, wrote that White's novels:[24] draw directly on a private store of memories and emotions, and you sense quite strongly that he took up a mask in order to be nakedly confessional in a way he could not otherwise have managed.Mark Rutherford School in Bedford is named after him and he has a blue commemorative plaque at 19 Park Hill in Carshalton.

[10] Men should not be too curious in analysing and condemning any means which nature devises to save them from themselves, whether it be coins, old books, curiosities, butterflies, or fossilsTo die is easy when we are in perfect health.