L. P. Hartley
Personal Information
Description
Leslie Poles Hartley was born in 1895 in Cambridgeshire, England. His father, who had strong religious views, was the manager of a factory. There was enough money in the family for them to live in a large country house and to send the boy to Harrow (one of the most expensive boys' schools in the country) and later to Oxford University. During the First World War Hartley served in the army, but he left before the end of the war as a result of ill-health. He returned to Oxford, where he continued studying until 1922. He then turned seriously to writing and lived in Italy for much of the rest of his life. He died in 1972. Hartley became known as an important writer of short stories, which appeared in a number of collections. He also wrote full-length books, and his three stories about 'Eustace and Hilda' were very popular. These follow the relationship between Eustace and his older sister Hilda as they grow from children to adults in Oxford and Venice. In these books, Hartley shows a great understanding of the difficulties of growing up, a subject to which he returns in The Go-Between. He also gives a very clear picture of the society and customs of the time, particularly in his description of Oxford student life in the 1920s. (Adapted from the biography written for "The Go-Between" Penguin readers edition.
Books
Facial justice
From the dust jacket blurb of the Book Club Edition: Like George Orwell's classic, 1984, Facial Justice is a novel about the New State -- both terrifying and believable. It is a revelation of a life to come, founded on self-abasement and equality; all citizens are delinquents: none can be branded worse than another...
Eustace and Hilda; a trilogy
The three books gathered together as Eustace and Hilda explore a brother and sister's lifelong relationship. Hilda, the older child, is both self-sacrificing and domineering, as puritanical as she is gorgeous; Eustace is a gentle, dreamy, pleasure-loving boy: the two siblings could hardly be more different, but they are also deeply devoted. And yet as Eustace and Hilda grow up and seek to go their separate ways in a world of power and position, money and love, their relationship is marked by increasing pain. L.P. Hartley's much-loved novel, the magnum opus of one of twentieth-century England's best writers, is a complex and spellbinding work: a comedy of upper-class manners; a study in the subtlest nuances of feeling; a poignant reckoning with the ironies of character and fate. Above all, it is about two people who cannot live together or apart, about the ties that bind -- and break.
The Hireling
A dramatic story of a young widow in mourning who unburdens herself to a handsome ex-soldier. In the car he drives for hire, he takes her out on journeys.
The Go-Between
Narrated as a memoir, this excellent novel tells the story of one summer at the turn of the century when the narrator was a young boy. The boy spends the summer in question as a guest at a country estate where he befriends a local farmer. He soon finds himself acting as an unwitting messenger, carrying letters back and forth between the farmer and the daughter of his host on whom he has a crush.