22 Facts About Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and young adult fiction, including A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time.

Madeleine L'Engle's works reflect both her Christian faith and her strong interest in modern science.

Madeleine L'Engle Camp was born in New York City on November 29,1918, and named after her great-grandmother, Madeleine Margaret L'Engle, otherwise known as Mado.

At one point, the family moved to a chateau near Chamonix in the French Alps, in what Madeleine L'Engle described as the hope that the cleaner air would be easier on her father's lungs.

In 1933, Madeleine L'Engle's grandmother fell ill, and they moved near Jacksonville, Florida to be close to her.

Madeleine L'Engle attended another boarding school, Ashley Hall, in Charleston, South Carolina.

Madeleine L'Engle published her novels The Small Rain and Ilsa prior to 1942.

Madeleine L'Engle met actor Hugh Franklin that year when she appeared in the play The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov, and she married him on January 26,1946.

Madeleine L'Engle determined to give up writing on her 40th birthday when she received yet another rejection notice.

The move was immediately preceded by a ten-week cross-country camping trip, during which Madeleine L'Engle first had the idea for her most famous novel, A Wrinkle in Time, which she completed by 1960.

Madeleine L'Engle later served for many years as writer-in-residence at the cathedral, generally spending her winters in New York and her summers at Crosswicks.

In 1982, Madeleine L'Engle reflected on how suffering had taught her.

Madeleine L'Engle told how suffering a "lonely solitude" as a child taught her about the "world of the imagination" that enabled her to write for children.

Madeleine L'Engle was seriously injured in an automobile accident in 1991, but recovered well enough to visit Antarctica in 1992.

Madeleine L'Engle abandoned her former schedule of speaking engagements and seminars.

Madeleine L'Engle died of natural causes at Rose Haven, a nursing facility close to her home in Litchfield, Connecticut, on September 6,2007, according to a statement made by her publicist the following day.

Madeleine L'Engle is interred in the Cathedral of St John the Divine in Manhattan.

In celebration of L'Engle's centenary year, Writing for Your Life hosted the inaugural Madeleine L'Engle Conference: Walking on Water on November 16,2019, in New York City, New York, at All Angels' Church on the Upper West Side.

Madeleine L'Engle was inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame in 2011.

The Madeleine L'Engle Collection includes manuscripts for the majority of her published and unpublished works, as well as interviews, photographs, audio and video presentations, and an extensive array of correspondence with both adults and children, including artwork sent to her by children.

Madeleine L'Engle wrote about both generations concurrently, with Polly first appearing in 1965, well before the second book about her parents as teenagers.

For Madeleine L'Engle, who wrote repeatedly about "story as truth", the distinction between fiction and memoir was sometimes blurred.