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Madeleine L'Engle (née Madeleine L'Engle Camp), was born November 29 , 1918 in New York City ). The American writer is 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,'' Tesseract s in ''A Wrinkle in Time,'' organ regeneration in ''Arm of the Starfish'' and so forth. BIOGRAPHY Madeleine L'Engle Camp was named after her great-grandmother, Madeleine L'Engle, otherwise known as Mado. Young Madeleine's 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 . The future author of ''A Wrinkle in Time'' 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. Madeleine's shyness, and clumsiness in gym class, led to her being branded as stupid by some of her teachers, especially her homeroom teacher. Unable to please them, she stopped trying to do so, and retreated into a world of favorite books and her own 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 Madeleine attended another boarding school, Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina . When Madeleine's father died in 1935, she was unable to get home in time 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 was appearing in the play '' The Cherry Orchard '' by Anton Chekhov when she met actor Hugh Franklin . L'Engle married Franklin on January 26 , 1946 , the year after the publication of her autobiographical 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 Hugh'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 Franklin family. L'Engle's life changed dramatically beginning in 1959. That year 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. Twenty-six publishers rejected the story before Farrar, Straus and Giroux finally published it in 1962. From 1960 to 1966, L'Engle taught at St. Hilda's and St. Hugh's Anglican School in New York. Overlapping this slightly, 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, and won numerous awards in the process. One of her books for adults, ''Two-Part Invention'', was a memoir of her marriage to actor Hugh Franklin , 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 Madeleine 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. However, this is no longer the case due to her deteriorating health in recent years. Her former schedule of speaking engagements, seminars, etc. has also been abandoned for the same reason. However, as recently as 2004, the claim was made that she is still writing. 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 in the new century. 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 humans 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 Laurell K. Hamilton . PARTIAL LIST OF WORKS Kairos
Chronos
Other fiction Katherine Forrester series:
Camilla Dickinson:
Single titles:
The Crosswicks Journals
Poetry
About L'Engle
IMPORTANT L'ENGLE CHARACTERS Recurring Kairos characters: Murry
O'Keefe
Other
Crossover characters
BIBLIOGRAPHY
EXTERNAL LINKS
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