L.P. Hartley (1895–1972,) fully Leslie Poles Hartley, was an English novelist, short-story writer, and critic. He published 17 novels, six volumes of short stories, and a book of criticism and was known for writing about social codes, moral responsibility, and family relationships.
Born near Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, Hartley was educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford. His early short stories, Night Fears (1924) and The Killing Bottle (1932) established his reputation as a master of the macabre. Later he transferred his Jamesian power of ‘turning the screw’ to psychological relationships and made a new success with such novels as his Eustace and Hilda trilogy The Shrimp and the Anemone (1944,) The Sixth Heaven (1946,) and Eustace and Hilda (1947.)
Much of Hartley’s work deals with memory and the effects of childhood experience on adult life and character. Among his finest works are The Boat (1950) and his best-known novel The Go-Between (1953; film, 1971.) Later novels include A Perfect Woman (1955,) The Hireling (1957,) and My Sister’s Keeper (1970.)
Hartley also published the volume of essays The Novelist’s Responsibility (1967) and The Collected Stories of L.P. Hartley (1968.)
Anne Mulkeen wrote Wild Thyme, Winter Lightning: The Symbolic Novels of LP Hartley (1974.)
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The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
—L. P. Hartley
Topics: Time, The Past, Change, History, Reflection, Past and Present, Past
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