The two most important facts about Andrew Marvell, biographically speaking, are that (despite the misleading testimony of the Miscellaneous Poems) he never married, and that he spent almost two decades as a Member of Parliament for Hull, from 1659, when he was 38, until his death in the summer of 1678. Hull was his home town. His family had moved there in 1624 when Marvell was 3, his father, Andrew Sr, was a moderate puritan, appointed as lecturer in Hull's Holy Trinity Church, Marvell probably attended Hull grammar school, and his return to public service there (though he mostly lived in London) tells us a good deal about his way of coping with the collapse of the English republican experiment in 1659–60.

Between his Hull childhood and dutiful middle age, whose record can be seen in the nearly 300 letters Marvell wrote to the Hull Corporation about parliamentary dealings, lay not quite a quarter of a century of monumental events. Marvell's response to these, or direct involvement in them, has to be pieced together from a set of fragmentary records and hints, some of which are his own poems. First came nine years, starting at age 12, at Trinity College, Cambridge. Although he graduated BA in 1639, he apparently abandoned his MA degree shortly after his father's accidental drowning in 1641. Between 1642 and 1647 he travelled through Holland, France, Italy and Spain, in circumstances we do not know, but Milton later wrote to John Bradshaw, President of the Council of State (21 February 1653) that ‘it was to very good purpose … & the gaineing of those 4 languages’. Hilton Kelliher guessed that Marvell left London soon after the outbreak of the First Civil War, and returned as soon as it ended.

Milton's remarks were made in the context of recommending Marvell to be Assistant Latin Secretary to the new republic, but he was unsuccessful in getting his protégé appointed until 1657. In the meantime, Marvell was obviously making good connections on the parliamentary side. Early in 1651 he had entered the employ of Sir Thomas Fairfax as tutor to his daughter Mary, and spent the next two years at Nunappleton House, the estate in Yorkshire to which Fairfax retired after resigning his command of the parliamentary armies.