Learn About Madeleine L'Engle on great-books.club

Madeleine L'Engle

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Born: November 28 1918

Died: 0505 09 20072007

Website: Go to Website

Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer best known for her young adult fiction, 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: tesseracts, for example, are featured prominently in A Wrinkle in Time, mitochondrial DNA in A Wind in the Door, organ regeneration in The Arm of the Starfish, and so forth.

"Madeleine was born on November 29th, 1918, and spent her formative years in New York City. Instead of her school work, she found that she would much rather be writing stories, poems and journals for herself, which was reflected in her grades . However, she was not discouraged.

At age 12, she moved to the French Alps with her parents and went to an English boarding school where, thankfully, her passion for writing continued to grow. She flourished during her high school years back in the United States at Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, vacationing with her mother in a rambling old beach cottage on a beautiful stretch of Florida beach.

She went to Smith College and studied English with some wonderful teachers as she read the classics and continued her own creative writing. She graduated with honors and moved into a Greenwich Village apartment in New York. She worked in the theater, where Equity union pay and a flexible schedule afforded her the time to write! She published her first two novels during these years—A Small Rain and Ilsa—before meeting Hugh Franklin, her future husband, when she was an understudy in Anton Chekov's The Cherry Orchard. They married during The Joyous Season.

She had a baby girl and kept on writing, eventually moving to Connecticut to raise the family away from the city in a small dairy farm village with more cows than people. They bought a dead general store, and brought it to life for 9 years. They moved back to the city with three children, and Hugh revitalized his professional acting career. The family has kept the country house, Crosswicks, and continues to spend summers there.

As the years passed and the children grew, Madeleine continued to write and Hugh to act, and they to enjoy each other and life. Madeleine began her association with the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, where she has been the librarian and maintained an office for more than thirty years. After Hugh's death in 1986, it was her writing and lecturing that kept her going. She has now lived through the 20th century and into the 21st and has written over 60 books and keeps writing. She enjoys being with her friends, her children, her grandchildren, and her great grandchildren."

http://us.macmillan.com/author/madele...

Copyright © 2007 Crosswicks, Ltd.

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Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L'Engle

Books from Madeleine L'Engle

A Wrinkle in Time

A Wind in the Door

A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Many Waters

A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel

An Acceptable Time

A Ring of Endless Light

The Time Quartet Box Set

The Arm of the Starfish

Meet the Austins

Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

A Circle of Quiet

And Both Were Young

Camilla

The Wrinkle in Time Quintet - Digest Size Boxed Set (Time Quintet, #1-5)

The Irrational Season

A Wrinkle in Time Trilogy (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet, #1-3)

The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi

Bright Evening Star: Mystery of the Incarnation

The Glorious Impossible