Leslie Hartly English writer Date of Birth: 30.12.1895 Country: Great Britain

Biography of L.P. Hartley

Leslie Poles Hartley, an English writer and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), was known for his collection of short stories and novels. His most famous work, "The Go-Between," was adapted into a film with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. Hartley was recognized as a master of the ghost story genre.

Born in Cambridge, Hartley received his education at Clifton College and the prestigious Harrow School. In 1915, he began studying modern history at Balliol College, Oxford, where he became friends with Aldous Huxley. However, due to his health, Hartley did not serve on the front lines when he joined the army in 1916. In 1919, he returned to Oxford and began publishing in the Oxford Poetry collections from 1920 to 1922. During this time, Hartley also became friends with the Asquith couple, particularly Cynthia Asquith, with whom he remained friends for life. He was also a member of Lady Ottoline Morrell's circle, which included Lord David Cecil, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, Edith and Osbert Sitwell, Edith Wharton, and Elizabeth Bowen.

In 1922, after an unsuccessful engagement with Joan Newes from Sussex, Hartley suffered a nervous breakdown and followed the advice of his long-time friend and writer Clifford Kitchin to spend most of his time in Venice. In December of 1923, Hartley left Oxford with a Second Class Honors degree in Modern History. It was also during this time that he was introduced to Constant Huntington, an American publisher who played a crucial role in Hartley's literary career. Starting in 1923 and for the next thirty years, Hartley regularly reviewed fiction for leading British publications such as the Saturday Review, The Sketch, The Observer, The Weekend Review, and The Times and Tide. His first collection of stories, "Night Fears," published in 1924, brought him recognition. However, it wasn't until 1944 that he published his first novel, "The Shrimp and the Anemone," as part of the Eustace and Hilda trilogy, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1947.

Hartley gained worldwide fame with his novel "The Go-Between," which received the Heinemann Foundation Prize from the Royal Society of Literature in 1954. His ghost stories were analyzed in Jack Sullivan's anthology, "Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story From Le Fanu to Blackwood" (1978), and later in S. T. Joshi's work, "The Evolution of the Weird Tale" (2004).

L.P. Hartley passed away in 1972. According to Lord David Cecil, "he was one of the most distinguished and original of modern novelists, capable of creating a vivid and rich world from a multitude of diverse elements. Hartley was an observant chronicler of everyday life and had a deep understanding of human nature. With a truly gothic imagination, he saw both the mystical light and the mystical darkness."