ShareThisBy KAREN MACPHERSON
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
On her 40th birthday in 1958, Madeleine L'Engle vowed to give up writing -- she just couldn't take any more rejection letters from publishers.
It hadn't always been this way.
Earlier in her life, L'Engle, who died Sept. 6 at the age of 88, had published several novels and even a couple of plays. But throughout much of the 1950s, which L'Engle later termed her "dry decade," she couldn't seem to get anything published. She once joked that "the only thing I was selling during this decade was stuff from the store" she and her husband operated in Connecticut to support their three children.
Fortunately for the generations of children who have since thrilled to her fantasies as well as her family stories, L'Engle found it impossible to give up writing. As she later explained it: "I had to write. I had no choice in the matter. It was not up to me to say I would stop, because I could not. It didn't matter how small or inadequate (was) my talent. If I never had another book published, and it was very clear to me that this was a real possibility, I still had to go on writing."
Not long after she went back to writing, L'Engle's luck began to change. "Meet the Austins," the first of a series of books about the Austin family, was published in 1960 to good reviews.
Getting another children's novel, "A Wrinkle in Time," published proved more of a challenge for L'Engle. After more than two-dozen publishers rejected the unconventional novel, L'Engle's agent advised her to quit, children's-book expert Anita Silvey writes in "100 Best Books For Children." Around that time, however, L'Engle hosted a tea party for her visiting mother and some friends, one of whom knew John Farrar of Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishers.
L'Engle took a chance and sent the manuscript of "A Wrinkle in Time" to Farrar. He loved it and agreed to publish it, but warned her that it would probably have limited appeal. Instead, the book, a quirky blend of science fiction, fantasy, theology and coming-of-age novel, was a near-instant hit with readers and won the 1963 Newbery Medal, the highest award for children's writing.
L'Engle later wrote four sequels to "Wrinkle" in what became known as her "Time Fantasy" series. "A Ring of Endless Light," one of the four sequels she wrote to "Meet the Austins," won a Newbery Honor in 1981. In addition, L'Engle published numerous adult books -- novels, journals and theological works.
Yet there is no doubt that L'Engle will be best remembered for "A Wrinkle in Time," which tells the story of how a teenager named Meg Murry, joined by her precocious preschooler brother, Charles Wallace, and a friend named Calvin, travels through time and space to save her scientist father from a pulsating brain called IT. L'Engle's masterful storytelling and finely drawn characters combine to pull readers through the pages of the book.
Leonard S. Marcus, a respected children's-book historian and author of "The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy," said L'Engle "stands at the head of fantasy in America. Not much had been published in fantasy before she came along with 'A Wrinkle in Time.' "
When "Wrinkle" won the Newbery, "it opened up a door for a different kind of fiction for children," Marcus adds. The book also has attracted numerous critics: fundamentalist Christians decry what they see as L'Engle's "anti-Christian" message, while more liberal groups complain about overt Christianity in "Wrinkle."
L'Engle's compulsion to follow her own muse was the reason for her eventual success, Silvey argues.
"Because L'Engle never mirrored what anyone else was writing, because she followed her own bent as a writer, she created books unique in their form and content. ... In teaching I encounter more 20-year-olds in love with this title ('A Wrinkle in Time') than any other from their childhoods," Silvey says.
Maria Salvadore, who teaches children's literature at the University of Maryland, believes that L'Engle also will be remembered for some of her other work, particularly "Meet the Austins." Although "Meet the Austins" is a warmly realistic family story -- not a fantasy -- it shares many elements with "Wrinkle," Salvadore says.
"Both explore love, loss and redemption ... seemingly as L'Engle did in her own life," she added.
Amy Kellman, a children's-literature consultant based in Pittsburgh, sums up L'Engle's popularity this way: "Madeleine L'Engle sent her imagination into space and pulled readers into her wrinkle in time. Her use of language caught us and held us through books set in different places and different universes. ... She'll be missed."
