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Madeleine L'Engle

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 72.14.228.89 (talk) at 22:54, 7 September 2007 (→Chronos: A Severed Wasp is misplaced here, though there is the usual amount of crossover.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Madeleine L'Engle
L'Engle Publicity photo from Random House
L'Engle Publicity photo from Random House
Born(1918-11-29)November 29, 1918
New York (state) New York City, New York, United States
DiedSeptember 6, 2007(2007-09-06) (aged 88)
Connecticut Connecticut, United States
Occupationnovelist
NationalityAmerican
Period1945 – 2007
Genrefiction, poetry, essays
Subjectscience fiction, fantasy etc.
Website
Madeleine L'Engle's official site

Madeleine L'Engle (November 29 1918 – September 6 2007)[1] was an American writer best known for her children's books, particularly the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet and Many Waters. Her works reflect her strong interest in modern science; mitochondrial DNA, for instance, is featured prominently in A Wind in the Door, tesseracts in A Wrinkle in Time, organ regeneration in The Arm of the Starfish and so forth. She died at her home in Connecticut at age 88.

Early life

Madeleine L'Engle Camp was born in New York City, and named after her great-grandmother, Madeleine L'Engle, otherwise known as Mado. Her mother, a pianist, was also named Madeleine. Her father, Charles Wadsworth Camp, was a writer and critic, and a foreign correspondent whose lungs were damaged by exposure to mustard gas during World War I. She wrote her first story at the age of five, and started keeping a journal at the age of eight. These early literary attempts did not translate into success at the New York City private school where she was enrolled. A shy, clumsy 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 went to a number of boarding schools and had many governesses.

In 1929 the Camps moved to a chateau near Chamonix in the French Alps, in the hope that the cleaner air would be easier on Charles Camp's lungs. Madeleine herself was sent to a boarding school in Switzerland. In 1933 the family moved to northern Florida, and she attended another boarding school, Ashley Hall, in Charleston, South Carolina. When her father died in 1935, she arrived home too late to say goodbye.

She attended Smith College from 1937 to 1941. After graduation she moved to an apartment in New York City. In 1942 she met actor Hugh Franklin when she appeared in the play The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov. L'Engle married Franklin on January 26 1946, the year after the publication of her first novel, The Small Rain. The couple's first daughter, Josephine, was born in 1947.

In 1952 the family moved to a 200-year-old farmhouse called Crosswicks in rural Connecticut. 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. During this period, L'Engle also served as choir director of the local Congregational Church. In 1956, Maria, the seven-year-old daughter of family friends, came to live with the Franklins after the deaths of her parents, eventually becoming part of the family.

In 1959 the Franklins moved back to New York City, where Hugh could resume his acting career. The move was 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. L'Engle completed the book in 1960. Literally dozens of publishers rejected the story before Farrar, Straus and Giroux finally published it in 1962.

Later years

From 1960 to 1966 (and again in 1989 and 1990), L'Engle taught at St. Hilda's & St. Hugh's School in New York. In 1965 she became a volunteer librarian at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, also in New York. During the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s she wrote dozens of books for children and adults. One of her books for adults, Two-Part Invention, was a memoir of her marriage, completed after her husband's death from cancer on September 26 1986. L'Engle was seriously injured in an automobile accident in 1991, but recovered enough to visit Antarctica in 1992. Bion Franklin died December 17 1999.

For many years, L'Engle maintained her role as writer-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, generally spending her winters in New York and her summers at Crosswicks. She became unable to travel or teach in her final years, however, due to reduced mobility from osteoporosis, and especially after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage in 2002. She also abandoned her former schedule of speaking engagements and seminars. A few compilations of older work, some of it previously unpublished, appeared after 2001.

L'Engle died on Thursday, September 6, 2007, according to a statement by her publicist the following day. She was 88. L'Engle died at a nursing home in Litchfield, Connecticut of natural causes.

Awards, honors and organizations

In addition to the numerous awards, medals and prizes won by individual books L'Engle wrote, she personally received many honors over the years. These included being named a Dame in the Order of St. John of Jerusalem (1972) the USM Medallion from the University of Southern Mississippi (1978), the Smith College Award "for service to community or college which exemplifies the purposes of liberal arts education" (1981), the Sophia Award for distinction in her field (1984), the Regina Medal (1985), the ALAN Award for outstanding contribution to adolescent literature, presented by the National Council of Teachers of English (1986), and the Kerlan Award (1990).

In 1985 she was a guest speaker at the Library of Congress, giving a speech entitled "Dare to be Creative!" That same year she began a two-year term as President of the Authors Guild. In addition she received over a dozen honorary degrees from as many colleges and universities, such as Haverford College[1]. Many of these name her as a Doctor of Humane Letters, but she was also made a Doctor of Literature and a Doctor of Sacred Theology, the latter at Berkeley Divinity School in 1984. In 1995 she was Writer in Residence for Victoria Magazine. In 2004 she received the National Humanities Medal, but could not attend the ceremony due to poor health.

Since 1976, Wheaton College in Illinois has maintained a special collection of Madeleine L'Engle's papers.

Bibliographic overview

L'Engle's best-known works are divided between "chronos" and "kairos"; the former is the framework in which the stories of the Austin family take place, and is presented in a primarily realistic setting, though occasionally with elements that might be regarded as science fiction. The latter is the framework in which the stories of the Murry and O'Keefe families take place, and is presented sometimes in a realistic setting and sometimes in a more fantastic or magical milieu. Generally speaking, the more realistic kairos material is found in the O'Keefe stories, which deal with the second generation characters.

The Murry-O'Keefe and Austin families should not be regarded as living in separate worlds, because several characters cross over between them, and historical events are also shared.

In addition to novels and poetry, L'Engle wrote many nonfiction works, including the autobiographical Crosswicks Journals and other explorations of the subjects of faith and art. For L'Engle, who wrote repeatedly about "story as truth," the distinction between fiction and memoir was sometimes blurred. Real events from her life and family history made their way into some of her novels, while fictional elements, such as assumed names for people and places, can be found in her published journals.

A theme often implied and occasionally explicit in L'Engle's works is that the phenomena that people call religion, science and magic are simply different aspects of a single seamless reality; a similar theme may arguably be discerned in the fiction works of C. S. Lewis or Diane Duane.

Partial list of works

Kairos

The Time Quartet and An Acceptable Time were re-packaged by Square Fish books as "The Time Quintet" in 2007.

Chronos

Other fiction

Katherine Forrester series:

Camilla Dickinson:

Single titles:

(Note: some ISBNs given are for later paperback editions, since no such numbering existed when L'Engle's earlier titles were published in hardcover.)

The Crosswicks Journals

The Genesis Trilogy

Poetry

Religion, the arts, and more autobiography

Important L'Engle characters

Main article: Major characters in the works of Madeleine L'Engle

References

  • A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L'Engle. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972 ISBN 0-374-12374-8
  • Scholastic BookFiles: A Reading Guide to A Wrinkle in Time ISBN 0-439-46364-5
  • Suncatcher: A Study of Madeleine L'Engle And Her Writing by Carole F. Chase ISBN 1-880913-31-3
  • Madeline L'Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life by Madeleine L'Engle and Carole F. Chase ISBN 0-87788-157-X
  • Christian Mythmakers: C. S. Lewis, Madeleine L'Engle, J. R. R. Tolkien, George MacDonald, G. K. Chesterton and Others by Rolland Hein ISBN 0-940895-48-X
  1. ^ Martin, Douglas (9/8/07). "Madeleine L'Engle, Children's Writer, Is Dead". The New York Times. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ A Swiftly Tilting Planet was published before Many Waters but takes place a few years later.
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