There is no single Andrew Marvell archive in Hull University Archives, but important manuscript material for the study of Marvell can be found in three separate locations: in the papers of the Thompson family at U DDFA/39/26-9; in Kenneth Macmahon's collections of local miscellany, at U DDMM/28/1; and in the papers of (James) Blair Leishman at U DX72.

Personal correspondence for Marvell is very thin on the ground and a third of the meagre forty five personal letters surviving and in print for Andrew Marvell represent correspondence with Henry and Edward Thompson. Hull University Archives has four of these letters. Two are addressed to Sir Henry Thompson, who had been mayor of York and owned a country estate at Escrick to the south of that city from 1668 (10 November 1674; 25 April 1677). The third letter from Marvell is to Edward Thompson younger brother of Sir Henry Thompson (15 December n.y., but probably 1674) and the fourth letter is to Marvell from Sir Henry Thompson (undated, but probably 1673). These four letters only came to the attention of Marvell scholars through the research of Caroline Robbins who published them along with some of her other Marvell-finds as 'Six Letters by Andrew Marvell' in Etudes Anglaises, 17 (1964). They have since been reprinted in the 3rd edition of H M Margoliouth's 'The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell' (1971).

However, a letter not found by Robbins and one that has not made it into into print is to be found at U DDMM/28/1. This is a photocopy of an autograph letter of Andrew Marvell's addressed to Henry Thompson (29 December 1675). As the original does not seem to exist in any public repository, the copy alone is very important.

U DX72 is a box of papers deposited in July 1970 by Harold Howie Borland of the Department of Swedish at the Universiry of Hull. Borland was the half-brother of J B Leishman, lecturer in English at Oxford University, who was an expert on the work of Andrew Marvell and most of the deposit comprises Leishman's notes, correspondence and revised lectures which were brought to publication by John Butt as 'The Art of Marvell's Poetry' (1966) (for a full description of these papers and more detailed biography see entry for Leishman).