L. P. Hartley

Leslie Poles Hartley was the son of Bessie and Harry Hartley, a solicitor and judicial officer. Hartley enrolled at Oxford University to read Modern History in 1915, where he befriended the writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley. Hartley was conscripted into the army during WWI but for health reasons was never sent to battle. After the war, Hartley returned to Oxford, mixing in literary circles. He subsequently worked as a book reviewer—British author J.B. Priestly once described him as “the best reviewer of fiction in the country”—but was frustrated by a lack of success with his own writing. It wasn’t until 1944 that Hartley published his first novel, The Shrimp and the Anemone. More novels followed, with Hartley winning the prestigious Heinemann Award for The Go-Between in 1953. Three years later he was given the symbolic honor of being named Commander of the British Empire. Throughout his life, Hartley was a busy socializer but rarely became very close to those around him; Virginia Woolf once described him as “a dull fat man.” He was not open about his homosexuality until late in life (though it was not legalized in Britain until 1967). Hartley died in London in 1972, at the age of 76.