Madeleine L'Engle | |
|---|---|
 L'Engle in the 1980s | |
| Born | Madeleine L'Engle Camp (1918-11-29)November 29, 1918 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | September 6, 2007(2007-09-06) (aged 88) Litchfield, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Alma mater | Smith College |
| Period | 1945–2031 |
| Genre | |
| Notable works | A Wrinkle in Time and sequels |
| Notable awards |
|
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 |
Madeleine L'Engle (/ˈlɛŋɡəl/; November 29, 1918[1] – September 6, 2007)[2] was an American writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, andyoung adult fiction, includingA Wrinkle in Time and its sequels:A Wind in the Door,A Swiftly Tilting Planet,Many Waters, andAn Acceptable Time. Her works reflect both herChristian faith and her strong interest in modernscience.
Madeleine L'Engle Camp was born inNew York City on November 29, 1918, and named after her great-grandmother, Madeleine Margaret L'Engle, otherwise known as Mado.[3] Her maternal grandfather was Florida bankerBion Barnett, co-founder ofBarnett Bank inJacksonville, 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 frommustard gas duringWorld War I.[a]
L'Engle wrote her first story at age five and began keeping ajournal at age eight.[5] 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 ofboarding schools and had manygovernesses.[6][page needed]
The Camps traveled frequently. At one point, the family moved to achâteau nearChamonix in theFrench 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. In 1933, L'Engle's grandmother fell ill, and they moved nearJacksonville, Florida to be close to her. L'Engle attended another boarding school,Ashley Hall, inCharleston, South Carolina. When her father died in October 1936, Madeleine arrived home too late to say goodbye.[7]
L'Engle attendedSmith College from 1937 to 1941. After graduatingcum laude from Smith,[8] she moved to an apartment in New York City. L'Engle published her novelsThe Small Rain andIlsa prior to 1942.[9] She met actorHugh Franklin that year when she appeared in the playThe Cherry Orchard byAnton Chekhov,[10] and she married him on January 26, 1946. Later she wrote of their meeting and marriage, "We met inThe Cherry Orchard and were married inThe Joyous Season."[8] 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 ofGoshen, 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.[11] 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 aschoir director of the localCongregational church.[12]
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.[13]
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. It was rejected more than thirty times before she handed it toJohn C. Farrar;[13] it was finally published byFarrar, Straus and Giroux in 1962.[12]
In 1960 the Franklins moved to an apartment on theUpper West Side, in theCleburne Building onWest End Avenue.[14] From 1960 to 1966 (and again in 1986, 1989 and 1990), L'Engle taught atSt. Hilda's & St. Hugh's School in New York. In 1965 she became a volunteer librarian at theCathedral 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.[citation needed]
During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, L'Engle wrote dozens of books for children and adults. Four of the books for adults formed theCrosswicks Journals series of autobiographical memoirs. Of these,The Summer of the Great-grandmother (1974) discusses L'Engle's personal experience caring for her aged mother, andTwo-Part Invention (1988) is a memoir of her marriage, completed after her husband's death fromcancer on September 26, 1986.
Soon after winning the Newbery Medal for her 1962 "junior novel"A Wrinkle in Time, L'Engle discussed children's books inThe New York Times Book Review.[15] The writer of a good children's book, she observed, may need to return to the "intuitive understanding of his own childhood," beingchildlike although notchildish. She claimed, "It's often possible to make demands of a child that couldn't be made of an adult... A child will often understand scientific concepts that would baffle an adult. This is because he can understand with a leap of the imagination that is denied the grown-up who has acquired the little knowledge that is a dangerous thing." Of philosophy, etc., as well as science, "the child will come to it with an open mind, whereas many adults come closed to an open book. This is one reason so many writers turn to fantasy (which children claim as their own) when they have something important and difficult to say."[15]
L'Engle was a Christian who attendedEpiscopal churches and believed inuniversal salvation, writing that "All will be redeemed in God's fullness of time, all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones."[16] As a result of her promotion ofChristian universalism, many Christian bookstores refused to carry her books, which were also frequently banned from evangelical Christian schools and libraries. At the same time, some of her most secular critics attacked her work for being far too religious.[17]
Her views on divine punishment were similar to those ofGeorge MacDonald, who also had a large influence on her fictional work. She said "I cannot believe that God wants punishment to go on interminably any more than does a loving parent. The entire purpose of loving punishment is to teach, and it lasts only as long as is needed for the lesson. And the lesson is always love."[18]
In 1982, L'Engle reflected on how suffering had taught her. She told how suffering a "lonely solitude" as a child taught her about the "world of the imagination" that enabled her to write for children. Later she suffered a "decade of failure" after her first books were published. It was a "bitter" experience, yet she wrote that she had "learned a lot of valuable lessons" that enabled her to persevere as a writer.[19]
In 1972,[20] L'Engle and her husband, Hugh Franklin, established the Crosswicks Foundation, afamily foundation.[21]
L'Engle was seriously injured in an automobile accident in 1991, but recovered well enough to visitAntarctica in 1992.[12] Her son, Bion Franklin, died on December 17, 1999, from the effects of prolonged alcoholism.[22] He was 47 years old.[23]
In her final years, L'Engle became unable to teach or travel due to reduced mobility fromosteoporosis, especially after suffering anintracerebral 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 of natural causes at Rose Haven, anursing facility close to her home in Litchfield, Connecticut, on September 6, 2007, according to a statement made by her publicist the following day.[24]She is interred in theCathedral of St. John the Divine inManhattan.[25]
In 2018, her granddaughters Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Léna Roy publishedBecoming Madeleine: A Biography of the Author of A Wrinkle in Time by Her Granddaughters.[26]
A Light So Lovely: The Spiritual Legacy of Madeleine L’Engle by Sarah Arthur was also published in 2018.[27]
L'Engle'sA Wrinkle in Time was adapted into a film twice byDisney. Atelevision film, directed byJohn Kent Harrison, premiered on May 10, 2004. When asked in an interview withNewsweek if the film "met her expectations", L'Engle said, "I have glimpsed it. ... I expected it to be bad, and it is."[28] Atheatrical film, directed byAva DuVernay, premiered March 9, 2018.[29]
In celebration of L'Engle's centenary year, Writing for Your Life hosted the inaugural Madeleine L'Engle Conference: Walking on Water on November 16, 2019, in New York City, New York, atAll Angels' Church on theUpper West Side.Katherine Paterson served as the keynote speaker.[30]
In addition to the numerous awards, medals, and prizes won by individual books L'Engle wrote, she personally received many honors over the years.[12] These included being named an Associate Dame of Justice in theVenerable Order of Saint John (1972);[31] the USM Medallion fromThe University of Southern Mississippi (1978); the Smith College Medal "for service to community or college which exemplifies the purposes of liberal arts education" (1981); the Sophia Award for distinction in her field (1984); theRegina Medal (1985); the ALAN Award for outstanding contribution to adolescent literature, presented by theNational Council of Teachers of English (1987);[32] and the Kerlan Award (1991).
In 1985 she was a guest speaker at theLibrary of Congress, giving a speech entitled "Dare to be Creative!" That same year she began a two-year term as president of theAuthors Guild. In addition she received over a dozenhonorary degrees from as many colleges and universities, such asHaverford College.[33] 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 atBerkeley Divinity School in 1984. In 1995 she was writer-in-residence forVictoria Magazine. In 1997 she was recognized for Lifetime Achievement from theWorld Fantasy Awards.[34]
L'Engle received the annualMargaret A. Edwards Award from theAmerican Library Association in 1998. The Edwards Award recognizes one writer and a particular body of work for a "significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature." Four books by L'Engle were cited:Meet the Austins,A Wrinkle In Time,A Swiftly Tilting Planet, andA Ring of Endless Light (published 1960 to 1980).[35] In 2004 she received theNational Humanities Medal[13] but could not attend the ceremony due to poor health.
L'Engle was inducted into theNew York Writers Hall of Fame in 2011.[36]
In a 2012 survey ofSchool Library Journal readers,A Wrinkle in Time was voted the best children's novel afterCharlotte's Web.[37][38]
In 2013, acrater on Mercury was named after L'Engle.[39]
AtSmith College, a fellowship is available in L'Engle's name to visit and use the special collections available there. This fund provides stipends to support travel by researchers—from novices to advanced, award-winning scholars—to explore the resources available in theSmith College Archives,Mortimer Rare Book Collection, andSophia Smith Collection of Women's History.[40]
Since 1976,Wheaton College inIllinois has maintained a special collection of L'Engle's papers, and a variety of other materials, dating back to 1919.[41] The Madeleine L'Engle Collection includes manuscripts for the majority of her published and unpublished works, as well as interviews, photographs, audio and video presentations, and an extensive array of correspondence with both adults and children, including artwork sent to her by children.
In 2019, a collection of 43 linear feet of L'Engle's family, personal, and literary papers came to theSophia Smith Collection of Women's History at Smith College. They had been donated by her literary estate.[42]
Most of L'Engle's novels fromA Wrinkle in Time onward are centered on a cast of recurring characters, who sometimes reappear decades older than when they were first introduced. The "Kairos" books are about the Murry and O'Keefe families, withMeg Murry andCalvin O'Keefe marrying and producing the next generation's protagonist,Polyhymnia O'Keefe. L'Engle wrote about both generations concurrently, with Polly (originally spelled Poly) first appearing in 1965, well before the second book about her parents as teenagers (A Wind in the Door, 1973). The "Chronos" books center onVicky Austin and her siblings. Although Vicky's appearances all occur during her childhood and teenage years, her sister Suzy also appears as an adult inA Severed Wasp, with a husband and teenage children. In addition, two of L'Engle's early protagonists, Katherine Forrester and Camilla Dickinson, reappear as elderly women in later novels. Rounding out the cast are several characters "who cross and connect":Canon Tallis,Adam Eddington, andZachary Gray, who each appear in both the Kairos and Chronos books.[43]
In addition to novels and poetry, L'Engle wrote many nonfiction works, including the autobiographicalCrosswicks 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.[44]
Chronos & Kairos series:
Stand-alone releases:
Note: some ISBNs given are for later paperback editions, since no such numbering existed when L'Engle's earlier titles were published in hardcover.
Picture books:
Collections:
Collections:
Crosswicks Journals series:
Stand-alones:
Genesis Trilogy:
Stand-alones:
…author Madeleine L'Engle in 1918
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Data from Wikidata
