Primary Contributors:

Cultures of Knowledge, based on metadata collated from The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell. Volume II: Letters, ed. H. M. Margoliouth and Pierre Legouis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd edn, 1971)

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Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

Politician and poet Andrew Marvell was born on 31 March 1621 and raised in Hull. At the age of thirteen, he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and received his BA five years later. His first published poems were written during this time, and he continued to produce satirical and metaphysical verse and prose throughout his life, although much of his poetry remained unpublished until after his death. He is recognized today as an accomplished and innovative lyric poet.

Having probably remained in Europe throughout the English Civil Wars, Marvell was fluid in his political allegiances, and, in general, his personal views are hard to discern. He held distinguished roles under the Protectorate, assisting John Milton as Latin secretary to Oliver Cromwell’s Council of State, as well as tutoring in the households of Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax. In 1659, he was elected MP for Kingston-upon-Hull.

However, Marvell had previously published poems celebrating Charles I and, subsequently, lamenting the regicide. Following the Restoration in 1660, he found favour with Charles II and was re-elected MP for Hull in the Cavalier Parliament. Although he was a diligent representative and retained his seat until shortly before his death, Marvell grew disillusioned, writing scathing verse and prose satires on the corruption of court and monarchy, which were largely circulated in manuscript form or published anonymously during his lifetime.

From 1659 until his death, Marvell also represented in Parliament the interests of the Hull Trinity House seamen’s guild, which exercised authority over the Port of Hull. He died unexpectedly of a fever following a visit to Hull on 16 August 1678.

Following his death, his housekeeper Mary Palmer spent several years claiming to have been secretly married to him, but this appears to have been part of an attempt by three of his associates to reclaim funds sunk in an earlier failed banking venture in which Marvell had supported them. Marvell was not known to have married, and he left no will.

Partners and Additional Contributors

Thanks to a suggestion by former EMLO Digital Fellow Esther van Raamsdonk (who was, subsequently, a post-doctoral fellow on the AHRC-funded ‘Networking Archives’ project), metadata for the correspondence of Andrew Marvell have been collated by EMLO Digital Fellow Alice Ahearn from the edition edited by H. M. Margoliouth and Pierre Legouis. This volume was published in its third edition by Oxford University Press in 1971. (For full bibliographic details, please see below.) The listing of these letters is available alongside the descriptions of five letters addressed to Marvell that are to be found in the Bodleian Library’s collections at the University of Oxford.

Key Bibliographic Source(s)

The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell. Volume II: Letters, ed. H. M. Margoliouth and Pierre Legouis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd edn, 1971). This edition is available online through Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (access via subscribing institution required).

Contents

The collection of letters collated from the Margoliouth and Legouis edition comprises 409 letters from Marvell, all in English, spanning the years 1653 to 1678. These letters fall into three categories: 294 to successive mayors and aldermen of the Hull Corporation (town council); sixty-nine to the wardens of the Hull Trinity House; and forty-five to miscellaneous personal correspondents. The Hull Corporation and Trinity House letters are mainly newsletters of Parliamentary business, including Marvell’s representation of them in the House. In his private letters, Marvell more openly discusses his religious and political concerns.

These letter records are mounted in EMLO alongside descriptions of four letters, in the care of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, that were sent to Marvell by Benjamin Worsley (1618–1677). These are located within MS Rawlinson Letters 50, and their records in EMLO contain short abstracts published within the Bodleian card catalogue.

Further resources

Bibliography

The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell. Volume II: Letters, ed. H. M. Margoliouth and Pierre Legouis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd edn, 1971). This edition is available online through Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (access via subscribing institution required).

Kelliher, W. H., ‘Marvell, Andrew (1621–1678), poet and politician’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), retrieved 14 November 2024.

Launch list of all letters from, to, or mentioning Marvell

Launch inventory of all letters published in the Margoliouth and Legouis edition