About Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007)
Her manuscripts, letters, and other archival materials are housed at Smith College in Massachusetts and Wheaton College in Illinois.
Obituary from The New York Times.
A Biographical Sketch by Abigail Santamaria
One hundred years ago, in the pre-dawn hours of November 29, 1918, Madeleine L’Engle’s mother hastily scrawled this letter to her husband, a lieutenant stationed in France: “Dearest Husband, My labor has come. I am going now to the hospital. How I long for you.”
Later that day, she gave birth to the child for whom she had yearned for 11 years, a baby girl who would grow up to become one of the most beloved American authors of the 20th century.
Madeleine’s earliest and most formative memory was being awakened from sleep and carried out to the beach on a clear, cloudless night. The expansive dark sky, the bright stars, and the sound of the waves offered a glimpse of glory, a revelation of creation and its bounty. This first glimpse of the enormity and depth of the universe would contribute to Madeleine’s understanding that science and God are not at odds — a radical and, to some, even blasphemous assertion that would appear as a theme in several of her novels, including Camilla and A Wrinkle in Time. Read more…
