Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L'Engle (November 29, 1918 – September 6, 2007) was an American writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and young adult fiction, including A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time.

Her works reflect both her Christian faith and her strong interest in modern science.

Madeleine L'Engle Camp was born in New York City on November 29, 1918, and named after her great-grandmother, Madeleine Margaret L'Engle, otherwise known as Mado.

Her maternal grandfather was Florida banker Bion Barnett, co-founder of Barnett Bank in Jacksonville, Florida.

Her mother, a pianist, was also named Madeleine: Madeleine Hall Barnett.

Her father, Charles Wadsworth Camp, was a writer, critic, and foreign correspondent who, according to his daughter, suffered lung damage from mustard gas during World War I.

L'Engle wrote her first story aged five and began keeping a journal aged eight.

These early literary attempts did not translate into academic success at the New York City private school where she was enrolled.

A shy, awkward child, she was branded as stupid by some of her teachers.

Unable to please them, she retreated into her own world of books and writing.

Her parents often disagreed about how to raise her, and as a result she attended a number of boarding schools and had many governesses.

The Camps traveled frequently.

At one point, the family moved to a château near Chamonix in the French Alps, in what Madeleine described as the hope that the cleaner air would be easier on her father's lungs.

Madeleine was sent to a boarding school in Switzerland.

However, in 1933, L'Engle's grandmother fell ill, and they moved near Jacksonville, Florida to be close to her.

L'Engle attended another boarding school, Ashley Hall, in Charleston, South Carolina.

When her father died in October 1936, Madeleine arrived home too late to say goodbye.

L'Engle attended Smith College from 1937 to 1941.

After graduating cum laude from Smith, she moved to an apartment in New York City.

L'Engle published her novels The Small Rain and Ilsa prior to 1942.

She met actor Hugh Franklin that year when she appeared in the play The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov, and she married him on January 26, 1946.

Later she wrote of their meeting and marriage, "We met in The Cherry Orchard and were married in The Joyous Season."

The couple's first daughter, Josephine, was born in 1947.

The family moved to a 200-year-old farmhouse called Crosswicks in the small town of Goshen, Connecticut in 1952.

To replace Franklin's lost acting income, they purchased and operated a small general store, while L'Engle continued with her writing.

Their son Bion was born that same year.

Four years later, seven-year-old Maria, the daughter of family friends who had died, came to live with the Franklins and they adopted her shortly thereafter.

During this period, L'Engle also served as choir director of the local Congregational church.

L'Engle determined to give up writing on her 40th birthday (November 1958) when she received yet another rejection notice.

"With all the hours I spent writing, I was still not pulling my own weight financially."

Soon she discovered both that she could not give it up and that she had continued to work on fiction subconsciously.

The family returned to New York City in 1959 so that Hugh could resume his acting career.

The move was immediately preceded by a ten-week cross-country camping trip, during which L'Engle first had the idea for her most famous novel, A Wrinkle in Time, which she completed by 1960.

In 1960 the Franklins moved to an apartment on the Upper West Side, in the Cleburne Building on West End Avenue.

From 1960 to 1966 (and again in 1986, 1989 and 1990), L'Engle taught at St. Hilda's & St. Hugh's School in New York.

During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, L'Engle wrote dozens of books for children and adults.

Four of the books for adults formed the Crosswicks Journals series of autobiographical memoirs.

It was rejected more than thirty times before she handed it to John C. Farrar; it was finally published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1962.

In 1965 she became a volunteer librarian at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, also in New York.

She later served for many years as writer-in-residence at the cathedral, generally spending her winters in New York and her summers at Crosswicks.