Madeleine L'Engle

Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage

Background

• Born Madeleine L'Engle (pronounced Lengel) Camp on November 29, 1918 in New York City. An only child, her father, a foreign correspondent; her mother, a pianist.
• Married actor Hugh Franklin on January 26, 1946 (died September 1986).
• Children, Josephine, Maria, and Bion
• Educated at Smith College (A.B. with honors, 1941). Attended New School for Social Research, 1941-42 and graduate school at Columbia University, 1960-61.

Career

• Worked as an actress in Eva La Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre, 1941-47
• Began to write for publication when she retired from theater to raise her three children at Crosswicks, an old farmhouse in Connecticut.
• Published over forty works in several genres, including novels for all ages.
• Best known for her award-winning "Time Fantasy" series for young people, including Newbery Medal winner A Wrinkle in Time (1962), rejected by 26 publishers before finally being accepted for publication. Combines science fiction with the themes of family love and moral responsibility.

Major Writings

Fiction for Young People
The Small Rain (1968)
"The Austin Family" series
Meet the Austins (1960)
The Moon By Night (1963)
The Twenty-four Days Before Christmas (1964)
The Young Unicorns (1968)
A Ring of Endless Light (1980)
The "Time Fantasy" series
A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
A Wind in the Door (1973)
A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978)
Many Waters (1986)

Autobiography
The Crosswicks Journals: A Circle of Quiet (1972),
The Summer of the Great-Grandmother (1974),
The Irrational Season (1977), and
Two-Part Invention (1988)

Critical Sources and Reviews

"Bonastra: Madeleine L'Engle WWW Resource

Tesseract: A Madeleine L'Engle Bibliography in Five Dimensions