The Sphinx at Dawn
Page 4
The family often returned to Crosswicks over the years and these visits inspired L’Engle’s Crosswicks Journals, including Two-Part Invention, which tells the story of her marriage, and A Circle of Quiet, in which she explores her role as a woman, mother, wife, and writer.
Back in Manhattan, L’Engle worked as a librarian and writer-in-residence at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, a position she held for more than three decades. Her lifelong fascination with theology and philosophy, and her personal faith, largely influenced her work. A Wrinkle in Time hints at many Christian themes, yet religious conservative groups have spoken out against the book, accusing L’Engle of misrepresenting God in a dangerous world of witchcraft, myth, and fantasy. It has been one of the most banned books in the United States. Apart from her religious influences, she said that Einstein’s theory of relativity and other theories in physics also served as inspiration. The novel’s combined use of both science fiction and philosophy established it as a sophisticated work of fiction, proving L’Engle’s belief that children’s literature deserves a place in the literary canon.
However, L’Engle initially struggled to achieve success and recognition for her work, and she almost quit writing at forty. She finally broke out onto the literary scene in 1960 with Meet the Austins, the first in her popular young adult series about the Austin family, which includes Newbery Honor Book A Ring of Endless Light. Even A Wrinkle in Time was rejected by twenty-six publishers before being accepted by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Although it was an instant commercial and critical sensation and has never gone out of print, the book’s strong female protagonist and intellectual themes were unusual in children’s fiction at the time.
L’Engle’s long literary career expanded far beyond the publication of A Wrinkle in Time. Among her many books are adult novels dealing with relationships, faith, and identity, including Certain Women, A Live Coal in the Sea, and A Severed Wasp; several books of poetry; and more overtly religious works like her Genesis Trilogy of biblical reflections. She won countless accolades, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, the National Religious Book Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. In 2004, President Bush awarded her a National Humanities Medal. L’Engle lived out her final years in Litchfield, Connecticut, and passed away at the age of eighty-eight on September 6, 2007.
A portrait of L’Engle in her first years of life.*
L’Engle ice-skating in Brittany, France, circa 1926.*
L’Engle with her dog, Sputzi, circa 1934.*
From July to September 1943, the Repertory Players at Straight Wharf Theatre produced two of L’Engle’s plays, The Christmas Tree and Phelia. She acted in both plays, among others.
L’Engle with her husband, actor Hugh Franklin, in 1946.*
L’Engle and her husband renovated and ran a general store in the late 1940s.
L’Engle always illustrated her family’s Christmas cards, including this one from 1952.
L’Engle with her granddaughters Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Lena Roy at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Cathedral Library, circa 1975.
L’Engle in the library of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, circa 1977.
L’Engle at a Manhattanville College commencement ceremony, where she received an honorary degree in 1989.*
L’Engle with her granddaughter Charlotte Jones Voiklis the night before the young woman’s wedding on August 30, 1996.
L’Engle speaking at a church in 1997.
L’Engle at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, circa 1997.*
*Photograph courtesy of the Madeleine L’Engle Papers (SC-3), Special Collections, Buswell Library, Wheaton, Illinois.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1982 by Crosswicks, Ltd.
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4154-6
This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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MADELEINE L’ENGLE
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