In Memoriam: Banned Book Month or: the saddest girl ever.
How do you say goodbye to an icon? September 6th, 2007 Madeleine L'engle died. Did she rock your world like she rocked mine? If you're my friend Robb she most certianly did not. But still, it's ironic that she should die during September, when banned book week is.
The following is from her website
Madeleine L'Engle Camp Franklin, 88, of Goshen, CT and New York City, died Thursday, September 6th. Born November 29, 1918, in New York City, to Charles Camp and Madeleine Barnett Camp, she was educated in Switzerland and South Carolina, before graduating from Smith College. She was the author of over 60 books, including the award-winning A Wrinkle in Time.
She is survived by her two daughters, Josephine Jones of Goshen, CT and Maria Rooney and her husband John of Mystic, CT; her five grandchildren, Madeleine Jones Roy and her husband Rob, Charlotte Jones Voiklis and her husband John, Edward Jones, Bryson Rooney, all of New York City, and Alexander Rooney, of Mystic CT; and five greatgrandchildren, Kosta and Magda Voiklis, and Cooper, Finn, and Scarlett Roy. She was preceded in death by her husband, Hugh Franklin, and her son, Bion Barnett Franklin.
In lieu of flowers, a memorial gift may be made to Crosswicks Foundation, Ltd, 924 West End Ave, apt 95, New York, New York, 10025. This is just an option, and we encourage you to honor her memory in any way you choose.
Read a banned book!
I am at a loss. I'm not sure even how to tell you how upset I am about her death. She lived a long life though and she is celebrated by many readers who love her.
Wheaton college has a special collection and this interview and article:
I was born in New York City on the snowy night of November 29, 1918, and lived in New York City for the next twelve years, with a jaunt or two to Europe. My father, Charles Wadsworth Camp, was a writer and my mother, Madeleine Hall Barnett Camp, a pianist, and the house was always full of artists of one kind or another. When I was twelve we moved to Europe, where we lived mostly in France and Switzerland, and I went to a Swiss boarding school. Then followed school in South Carolina and Smith College.
After graduating from Smith in 1941, I took an apartment in Greenwich Village with three other girls, two of whom were aspiring actresses. Because I wanted to be a writer, I was the lucky one to get jobs in the theater (I thought it was an excellent school for writers and it is). When I was in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard I met actor Hugh Franklin, and I married him a year later. At his request I withdrew from Actor’s Equity and in 1952 he also retired from the theater “forever.”
We had an old white farmhouse in northwestern Connecticut, and he wanted to settle down, put down roots, and get away from the tensions of the city and the theater. In order to earn a living, we acquired a defunct general store. I must honestly admit that helping to build up a dead general store, participate in the life of a small, but very active community, run a large old farmhouse, and raise three small children is the perfect “way not” to write a book. However, I did manage to write at night. I have written since I could hold a pencil, much less a pen, and writing is for me an essential function, like sleeping and breathing.
As a gifted girl excluded from the circle of popular children, L’Engle cultivated a richly textured interior life, immersing herself in the works of L. Frank Baum, L.M. Montgomery and, most happily, George MacDonald. “Meeting [him] when I was very young,” she writes, “was a blessing to my understanding of God and creation and our own small but potentially beautiful place in it.”
During college, L’Engle wrote plays and published short stories in magazines, and in 1945 released her first book, The Small Rain. Then followed Ilsa (1946) and Camilla Dickinson (1951). After she and Hugh moved to the country to raise their family, L’Engle wrote prolifically but published only one novel, A Winter’s Love (1957). Discouraged, she gave up writing; however, even in the depths of disheartenment she found herself composing a book about failure, and there decided that perhaps she was a writer, after all. Her next title was Meet the Austins (1960).
At this time, she and Hugh decided to return to New York City where he resumed his acting career, eventually landing a plum role on the daytime soap opera, “All My Children.” Soon after, L’Engle developed a fascination for quantum physics, and in response wrote A Wrinkle in Time, the novel that finally secured her lasting commercial success. For Wrinkle, she received the 1963 Newbery Medal, a particularly satisfying celebration for a book that had gathered dozens of rejections.
In the city, L’Engle involved herself with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine where she assumed the position of church librarian while enjoying a challenging tutelage under her spiritual advisor, Edward Nason West, the Episcopal cathedral’s extraordinarily learned subdean. Subsequently, West was honored in several novels as a character called “Canon Tallis.”
Her reputation firmly established, L’Engle produced confidently throughout the 1960’s. Titles include The Moon by Night (1963), The Journey with Jonah (1967), The Young Unicorns (1968), and Dance in the Desert (1969). In 1973 she wrote A Wind in the Door, continuing the “time” narrative introduced in Wrinkle, following with A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), Many Waters (1986) and An Acceptable Time (1989). A Ring of Endless Light, chronicling the adventures of heroine Vicki Austin, received the Newbery Honor award for 1981.
Though all of her writing is seasoned with personal touches, in the 1970’s L’Engle deliberately leaned toward autobiographical intimacy with The Crosswicks Journals, presenting extended ruminations about her family, faith and career. In the final entry, Two-Part Invention (1988), she reflects on her marriage to Hugh, and his eventual death from cancer in 1986.
Further meditations on pilgrimage and creation are found in the Genesis trilogy, And It Was Good (1983), A Stone for a Pillow (1986) and Sold Into Egypt (1989). In this series, she engages such biblical characters as Jacob and Joseph as she presents observations concerning bereavement, relationship and journey.
Later titles, fiction and non-fiction, include Certain Women (1992), Troubling A Star (1994), Penguins and Golden Calves (1996), Bright Evening Star (1997), Miracle on 110th Street (1998) and The Other Dog (2001). In Friends for the Journey (1997), co-written with poet Luci Shaw, L’Engle discusses the value of discerning friendship.
During most of these years, L’Engle, in addition to writing, embarked on an arduous lecturing career that would have exhausted a woman half her age, delivering commencement speeches and conducting spirituality retreats. Her thinking concerning creativity and the spirit is expounded in Walking on Water (1978), a classic text for Christian artists.
In 1975, Professor Clyde Kilby of Wheaton College, IL, approached L’Engle about donating her papers. Since, Wheaton has acquired an ever-increasing assortment of manuscripts, artwork and correspondence for its Special Collections. Barring restrictions, this material is available to researchers.
Madeleine L’Engle died on September 6, 2007. In her life and writing, the artist who postulates so eloquently about space, time and love has achieved timelessness.
This is said a lot more elloquently than I can say. May you rest in peace Madeline, thank you for all the literature. Thanks for enduring through the banning of your books.
