Madeleine L'Engle
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| Madeleine L'Engle | |
 L'Engle Publicity photo from Random House |
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| Born: | November 29, 1918 (age 88) New York City, N.Y. |
|---|---|
| Occupation: | novelist |
| Nationality: | American |
| Writing period: | 1945 to the present |
| Genres: | fiction, poetry, essays |
| Subjects: | science fiction, fantasy etc. |
| Website: | Madeleine L'Engle's official site |
Madeleine L'Engle (born November 29, 1918) is 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 Arm of the Starfish and so forth.
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[edit] Biography
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.
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.
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 Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, generally spending her winters in New York and her summers at Crosswicks. She has been unable to travel or teach in recent years, however, due to reduced mobility from osteoporosis, and especially since suffering a cerebral hemorrhage in 2002. She has also abandoned her former schedule of speaking engagements, seminars, etc. Whether any new writing will appear in print in the foreseeable future remains to be seen, but a few compilations of older work, some of it previously unpublished, have appeared since the new millennium.
[edit] Awards, honors and organizations
In addition to the numerous awards, medals and prizes won by individual books L'Engle has written, she has personally received many honors over the years. These include 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, with a speech called "Dare to be Creative!" That same year she began a two-year term as President of the Authors Guild. In addition she has received over a dozen honorary degrees from as many colleges and universities. Many of these name her as a Doctor of Humane Letters, but she has also been 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.
[edit] 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 framework, 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 framework and sometimes in a more fantastic or magical framework. 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 has written many nonfiction titles, including the autobiographical Crosswicks Journals and other explorations of the subjects of faith and art. For L'Engle, who has written repeatedly about "story as truth," the distinction between fiction and memoir is sometimes blurred. Real events from her life and family history have 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 what people call religion, science and magic are simply different aspects of a single seamless reality; a similar theme may be discerned in the fiction works of C. S. Lewis or Diane Duane.
[edit] Partial list of works
[edit] Kairos
- First-generation (Murry) (Time Quartet)
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- ^ A Swiftly Tilting Planet was published before Many Waters but takes place a few years later.
- Second-generation (O'Keefe)
[edit] Chronos
- Meet the Austins (1960) ISBN 0-374-34929-0
- The Moon by Night (1963) ISBN 0-374-35049-3
- The Young Unicorns (1968) ISBN 0-374-38778-8
- A Ring of Endless Light (1980) ISBN 0-374-36299-8 (Newbery Honor Book)
- Troubling a Star (1994) ISBN 0-374-37783-9
- A Severed Wasp (1982) ISBN 0-374-26131-8
[edit] Other fiction
Katherine Forrester series:
- The Small Rain (1945), ISBN 0-374-26637-9
- Prelude (1968), no ISBN, an adaptation of the first half of The Small Rain
- A Severed Wasp (1982), ISBN 0-374-26131-8
Camilla Dickinson:
- Camilla Dickinson (1951) ISBN 0-440-01020-9, later republished as Camilla
- A Live Coal in the Sea (1996) ISBN 0-374-18989-7
Single titles:
- Ilsa (1946) (no ISBN)
- And Both Were Young (1949), ISBN 0-440-90229-0
- A Winter's Love (1957), ISBN 0-345-30644-9
- The Love Letters (1966), revised and reissued as Love Letters (2000), ISBN 0-87788-528-1
- The Other Side Of The Sun (1971) ISBN 0-374-22805-1
- Certain Women (1996) ISBN 0-374-12025-0
(Note some ISBNs given are for later paperback editions, since no such numbering existed when L'Engle's earlier titles were published in hardcover.)
[edit] The Crosswicks Journals
- A Circle of Quiet (1972)
- The Summer of the Great-grandmother (1974)
- The Irrational Season (1977)
- Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage (1988)
[edit] Poetry
- Lines Scribbled On An Envelope (1969)
- The Weather Of The Heart (1978)
- A Cry Like A Bell (1987)
- The Ordering of Love: The New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L'Engle (2005) (includes reprints from the above)
[edit] Religion, the arts, and more autobiography
- Madeleine L'Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life Compiled by Carole Chase
- Penguins and Golden Calves
- The Rock That Is Higher: Story as Truth
- Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art
[edit] Important L'Engle characters
- Main article: Major characters in the works of Madeleine L'Engle
[edit] 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
- ^ A Swiftly Tilting Planet was published before Many Waters but takes place a few years later.
[edit] External links
- L'Engle's Official Site
- The Tesseract: A Madeleine L'Engle Bibliography in 5 Dimensions
- ‘I Dare You’ Madeleine L’Engle on God, ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and aging well Newsweek
- SparkNotes: A Wrinkle in Time
- L'Engle's site at WaterBrook Press
- NovelGuide: A Wrinkle in Time
- About the Author - Wheaton College
- London Gazette Notice of creation as Dame of the Order of St John
