22 on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most banned books for its depiction of fantasy and religion. The rest is history.Ĩ. L’Engle credits Smith professor Esther Cloudman Dunn’s courses in 17th-century literature and Shakespeare for teaching her the techniques of writing fiction.ĩ. Since its publication in 1962, A Wrinkle in Time has sold more than 10 million copies and has inspired at least two movies: a made-for-television version in 2003 and this year’s big-screen adaptation directed by Ava DuVernay.ġ0. Then, during a family road trip, she dreamed up the idea for her most famous work and kept writing. Fearing more rejection, she vowed to give up writing by her 40th birthday.

There was a period throughout her 30s when L’Engle wasn’t being published.

A Wrinkle in Time almost did not make it to the page. If she had an idea, she let the story talk to her.’”ħ. “Stories spoke to her,” says granddaughter Charlotte Jones Voiklis. in 1933 and spent her high school years at a boarding school in Charleston, South Carolina.ģ. As a child, L’Engle entered a poetry contest in school and won however, her teachers didn’t believe she had written the prize-winning poem, so her mother went to school the next day carrying a stack of her daughter’s stories and poems to prove her talent.Ĥ. L’Engle, an English major at Smith, always described herself as an average student (“I’m not an intellectual, I’m instinctual,” she once said), but her grade card shows that other than a D in German she received a steady stream of A’s and B’s in subjects ranging from English to philosophy and music.ĥ. At Smith, L’Engle had the nickname “Tony Camp.” Perhaps the first time she signed her name “Madeleine L’Engle Camp” was on a poem, “The “Gates of Heaven,” in the November 1939 issue of Smith’s magazine The Tatler.Ħ. For L’Engle, the key to writing was listening. Her mother, Madeleine Bennett Camp, was a pianist, and her father, Charles Wadsworth Camp, was a critic, writer and foreign correspondent.Ģ. At age 12, L’Engle moved with her parents to the French Alps and attended an English boarding school. 1. L’Engle, born November 29, 1918, was the only child of artistic parents.

Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle