I want to preface my talk with a more general look at the international reception of ‘Mark Rutherford’.

The earliest translation I have found is into Czech (Vlastní Zivotopis Marka Rutherford, ‘published by his friend Ruben Shapcott’, Prague, 1905). This was followed chronologically by André Chevrillon’s substantial article on Hale White and Ruskin in the Revue des deux mondes in 1908. A year later came the sympathetic paragraph in Leon Kellner’s history of Victorian literature, published in German in Leipzig in 1909 (see Mark Rutherford Society Newsletter, September 2010, p. 13). André Gide’s first reference to Hale White followed in 1915, and he continued to mention Mark Rutherford in his ‘Journals and Letters’ upto 1936 (see Mark Rutherford Society Newsletter, February 2007, pp. 7–9). Hans Klinke’s book appeared in 1930, Ursula Buchmann’s in 1950.

A French edition of The Autobiography appeared in 1957 (L’autobiographie de Mark Rutherford), published by Grasset, translated and introduced by Pierre Leyris, translator of Gerard Manley Hopkins and T.S. Eliot. An Italian translation (Autobiografia di Mark Rutherford), published by Lerici in Milan, followed in 1963; this had been preceded by a substantial article by the critic Mario Praz in the journal Anglica in 1946. From 1956 through to the late 1970s, five volumes of selections of Mark Rutherford’s writings appeared in Japanese in Tokyo, including one entitled (in Japanese) ‘Atonement and other stories’ and another ‘Mark Rutherford: living with love and faith’. Some of you may know of other translations. This list cannot be definitive. For instance, the foreign editions would have elicited reviews, which I have not researched.

In this way, Hale White’s renown can almost seem greater internationally than nationally. Who among us has not experienced the surprise or shock, of having to explain who Hale White / Mark Rutherford is to otherwise apparently educated British people? It may be asking too much to think that an event like this can change things, but it is what we all hope for. Though of course we would all lose something if that hope came true.

I wish to thank here Cecily Nowell-Smith for help with the Japanese, and Paul Rohan for help with the Czech editions.

[As NJ explained, these remarks were delivered as a preface to his paper on ‘Two European Scholars of William Hale White’, delivered at the Mark Rutherford Society’s symposium in 2013. The text of his paper was published in Bunyan Studies (no.17, 2013) and can be read here.]