Abstract

The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford

The article focuses on the book The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, Dissenting Minister, edited by Reuben Shapcott. "Mine is the tale of a commonplace life, perplexed by many problems I have never solved; distributed by many difficulties I have never surmounted; and blotted by ignoble concessions which are a constant regret." These are the terms in which Mark Rutherford describes his own career. They are justified by every detail of his life, as far as that life is laid before the reader in this book. These 180 pages contain in one sense nothing but the commonplace facts of the commonplace existence of a dissenting minister, who passed through very ordinary trials, both moral and physical, and did not come out a conqueror. From another point of view the book is as real, as striking, and as instructive a picture of what life in England often actually has been to men of this generation as any which can be found in the pages either of biography or of fiction.