After Hartley separated from her husband and left Marvell Press, she earned degrees in English Literature and Victorian Studies from the University of Hull in the early 1970s.
Hartley was born at Ivy Terrace, Constable Street, Hull, Yorkshire on 27 April 1933,[1][2] to a poor working-class family.
[4] At age 14, Hartley was awarded a scholarship to go to Thoresby High School in Hull, studying "commercial" as one of three courses offered to her.
[7] After Hartley was compelled to find work,[3] she dropped out of her education after one year to become a shorthand typist at a nominal wage with a small accountancy firm,[7] ignoring advice from her mother to "settle down".
[4] She found extra inspiration from classes of the Workers' Educational Association of Richard Hoggart,[3] describing herself in her teenage years as "insufferable working-class would-be intellectual: “What's that you're reading Jean?” “It's T S Eliot's The Waste Land, but you wouldn't understand it.
[5] She was made the magazine's co-editor and business manager,[1][6] which gained national readership and featured contributions from The Movement poets such as Philip Larkin in its second edition.
[8] She published her autobiography, Philip Larkin, the Marvell Press, and Me, in 1989, and wrote the BBC Radio 4 programme The Wayward Girls that was broadcast on 4 November 1992,[1] which discusses single parenthood in Hull during the 1950s.
[5] Hartley promoted the poet's Frank Redpath and the poetry magazine editor Ted Tarling artistic ambitions.
[8] She was cared at home by her daughters and granddaughter in her final years,[6] and died on 18 July 2011, from heart failure at Victoria Avenue, Hull.