Little Marlow was once the site of a Benedictine convent dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Today the village is in a scenic location on the River Thames, although home to a large sewage works, with exceptional birdwatching habitats on the lakes created from former gravel extraction sites.

The toponym "Marlow" is derived from the Old English for "land remaining after the draining of a pool".

Hamlets in the parish of Little Marlow include Coldmoorholme, Fern, Handy Cross, Sheepridge, and Winchbottom.

Little Marlow appears briefly in Mary Shelley's 1826 science fiction novel The Last Man, in a sequence where the novel's protagonist recounts how the village's residents went about trying to prevent themselves from falling ill with the plague.