Madeleine L'Engle - auteur jeunesse américaine

News: Announcements & Press
09/07
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.

05/07

Wikipedia :

Madeleine L'Engle Camp was born in New York City, and named after her great-grandmother, Madeleine L'Engle, otherwise known as Mado. Her mother, a pianist, was also named Madeleine. Her father, Charles Wadsworth Camp, was a writer and critic, and a foreign correspondent whose lungs were damaged by exposure to mustard gas during World War I.

L'Engle wrote her first story at the age of five, and started keeping a journal at the age of eight. These early literary attempts did not translate into success at the New York City private school where she was enrolled. A shy, clumsy child, she was branded as stupid by some of her teachers. Unable to please them, she retreated into her own world of books and writing. Her parents often disagreed about how to raise her and as a result she went to a number of boarding schools and had many governesses.

In 1929 the Camps moved to a chateau near Chamonix in the French Alps, in the hope that the cleaner air would be easier on Charles Camp's lungs. Madeleine herself was sent to a boarding school in Switzerland. In 1933 the family moved to northern Florida, and she attended another boarding school, Ashley Hall, in Charleston, South Carolina. When her father died in 1935, she arrived home too late to say goodbye.

L'Engle attended Smith College from 1937 to 1941. After graduation she moved to an apartment in New York City. In 1942 she met actor Hugh Franklin when she appeared in the play The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov. L'Engle married Franklin on January 26, 1946, the year after the publication of her first novel, The Small Rain. The couple's first daughter, Josephine, was born in 1947.

In 1952 the family moved to a 200-year-old farmhouse called Crosswicks in rural Connecticut. To replace Franklin's lost acting income, they purchased and operated a small general store while L'Engle continued with her writing. Their son, Bion, was born that same year. During this period, L'Engle also served as choir director of the local Congregational Church. In 1956, Maria, the seven-year-old daughter of family friends, came to live with the Franklins after the deaths of her parents, eventually becoming part of the family.

Career as writer

In 1959 the Franklins moved back to New York City so Hugh could resume his acting career. The move was preceded by a ten-week cross-country camping trip, during which L'Engle first had the idea for her most famous novel, A Wrinkle in Time. L'Engle had completed the book by 1960, but more than two dozen publishers rejected the story before Farrar, Straus and Giroux finally published it in 1962.

From 1960 to 1966 (and again in 1989 and 1990), L'Engle taught at St. Hilda's & St. Hugh's School in New York. In 1965 she became a volunteer librarian at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, also in New York. She later served for many years as writer-in-residence at the Cathedral, generally spending her winters in New York and her summers at Crosswicks.

During the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, L'Engle wrote dozens of books for children and adults. One of her books for adults, Two-Part Invention, was a memoir of her marriage, completed after her husband's death from cancer on September 26, 1986.

Later years

L'Engle was seriously injured in an automobile accident in 1991, but recovered well enough to visit Antarctica in 1992. Her son, Bion Franklin, died December 17, 1999.

In her final years, L'Engle became unable to travel or teach, due to reduced mobility from osteoporosis, and especially after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage in 2002. She also abandoned her former schedule of speaking engagements and seminars. A few compilations of older work, some of it previously unpublished, appeared after 2001.

Madeleine L'Engle died of natural causes at a nursing facility near her Connecticut home on September 6, 2007, according to a statement by her publicist the following day.