L'Engle, Madeleine 1918–2007

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L'Engle, Madeleine 1918–2007

(Madeleine L'Engle Camp, Madeleine Franklin, Madeleine L'Engle Franklin, Madeleine L'Engle Camp Franklin, Madeleine Camp Franklin L'Engle)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for SATA sketch: Born November 29, 1918, in New York, NY; died September 6, 2007, in Litchfield, CT. Novelist, children's author, poet, playwright, memoirist, educator, and librarian. L'Engle is remembered as the award-winning author of children's books featuring the Murry family, even though, ironically, she claimed that she never intended to write for children. In fact, most of the sixty-plus books she published in her fifty-year career were for adults. Yet her immortality may well rest on her "Time Fantasy" series about young Meg Murry and her quest to save her father from dark forces on a distant planet that could only be reached by traveling through time. A Wrinkle in Time (1962) became a best-seller and earned L'Engle a Newbery award from the American Library Association, but it also became one of the most banned children's books in history. Initially, the book almost never went to press, as an adult novel featuring a juvenile protagonist was hard to market. As a children's novel, the story depended on time travel in a universe governed by principles reminiscent of quantum physics and was deemed too complicated for young readers. Finally published, L'Engle's combination of myth and mysticism with science and fiction disturbed many conservative Christians. Despite this, A Wrinkle in Time became an unqualified popular success, and four more "Time Fantasy" novels followed. L'Engle described herself as an Episcopalian and worked for many years as a librarian at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Her adult writings included novels, poetry, plays, prayer collections, and spiritual meditations, none of which provoked religious controversy. She also adapted several Bible stories for children and also wrote the "Austin Family" series for children, both ventures which proved non-controversial. Much of L'Engle's fiction reflected her background as an only child raised by middle-aged parents in the United States and abroad, and educated at boarding schools. She worked as an actress and married Hugh Franklin, a successful television actor. She worked briefly as a schoolteacher and raised her family. Through all of it she remained first and foremost a writer, but when it came to fantasy, L'Engle herself claimed that her stories sometimes seemed to write themselves. She accepted comments describing A Wrinkle in Time as an allegory with spiritual overtones, but her own interpretation of its message varied over the years. L'Engle's later books reflect the wide range of her writings; they include An Acceptable Time (1996), the final "Time Fantasy" novel; Mothers and Sons (1999); The Other Dog (2001), a children's picture book; and the autobiographical novel The Joys of Love, which was written in the 1940s but not published until after her death.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Popular Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1997.

L'Engle, Madeleine, A Circle of Quiet, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1972.

L'Engle, Madeleine, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1974.

L'Engle, Madeleine, The Irrational Season, Seabury Press (New York, NY), 1977.

L'Engle, Madeleine, Two-Part Invention, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1988.

L'Engle, Madeleine, My Own Small Place: Developing the Writing Life, Harold Shaw (Wheaton, IL), 1998.

L'Engle, Madeleine, Madeleine L'Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life, collected by Carol Chase, WaterBrook Press (Colorado Springs, CO), 2001.

St. James Guide to Children's Writers, 5th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.