First published in 1989 Philip Larkin, the Marvell Press, and Me is the story of how this small publishing company became a chapter in literary history when, in 1955, the then novice publishers, of which Jean Hartley was one, were entrusted with the manuscript of Larkin’s The Less Deceived .
The Less Deceived , Larkin’s second collection, contained the mature Philip Larkin style – that of a detached observer of what Jean Hartley referred to as ‘ordinary people doing ordinary things’ – the virtues of w…
