Marie Hartley (1905–2006)

Marie Hartley was born in Morley, West Yorkshire, to a prosperous family of wool merchants. She attended Leeds College of Art and then the Slade School in London, where she specialized in wood engraving. During the 1930s and 1940s, she worked with her friend Ella Pontefract to co-write and illustrate books on the Yorkshire Dales. The two women published six books on Yorkshire life and customs before Pontefract's death in 1945. Afterwards, Hartley worked with her friend Joan Ingilby. Marie Hartley was the author or co-author and
illustrator of some 40 books on the social history of the Dales. She spent a total of 75 years traveling across the county gathering stories, written materials, and artifacts from the disappearing rural traditions of Yorkshire. In the early 1970s, Hartley and Ingilby donated their collection to the former North Riding of Yorkshire County Council, a gift that formed the basis of the collection now housed in the Dales Countryside Museum at Hawes. Together
they wrote Life and Traditions in the Yorkshire Dales (1968) and The Old Hand Knitters of the Dales (1951), two books now considered classics. Both were appointed MBE in 1997. In 1993, they received
the Silver Medal of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, which houses the archive of their documents and photographs.