Madeleine L'Engle (Camp) Franklin (1918 - 2007)

Born 29 Nov 1918 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

Ancestors

Wife of Hugh Hale Franklin — married 26 Jan 1946 in Cook, Illinois, United States

Died 6 Sep 2007 at age 88 in Litchfield, Connecticut, United States

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Sharon Casteel [send private message]

Biography

Madeleine (Camp) Franklin is Notable.

Author Madeleine L'Engle was the daughter of Charles Camp and Madeleine Barnett. She was born in New York City on 29 November 1918. She married Hugh Franklin, an actor. L’Engle was eccentric and strange-looking—she often compared herself to a “giraffe”—but she also had a loving husband, adorable children, legions of fans, an idyllic farmhouse in Connecticut, and a grand apartment on the Upper West Side. She died on 6 September 2007 and was buried at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, New York County (Manhattan), New York, USA.^[1]

A Wrinkle in Time

Her novel A Wrinkle in Time, won the Newberry Award in 1963,(the highest honor for children’s literature in the United States) it became a surprise bestseller. Synopsis: ::Along with three angels, the eccentric and strange looking Meg travels with her younger brother Charles Wallace to the planet Camazotz, to save their scientist father from the forces of IT, a malevolent disembodied brain. Meg/Madeleine was an inspiration for bookish girls everywhere. It was semi-autobiographical.

The Crosswicks Journals

The Crosswicks Journals painted a picture of a real-life version of Meg: stubborn, loving, fiercely intelligent, and moody.

Articles and Books about L'Engle

New Yorker profile by Cynthia Zarin (2004)

This article attacked the public image of L’Engle that the Crosswicks Journals had honed. Zarin reported that L’Engle’s beloved son Bion (the inspiration for Charles Wallace, the golden child of Wrinkle) had died of late-stage alcoholism, which L’Engle would not acknowledge; that her absent father had died of the same illness (she said he had aggravated a war wound); and that her husband, actor Hugh Franklin, had engaged in multiple affairs, one of which continued until his death. Less dramatic, but nonetheless painful to fans, were the revelations that L’Engle’s children called her autobiographical work “pure fiction” and resented her willingness to cannibalize their lives for public consumption. “It’s hard to be the magic child,” Maria Rooney, L’Engle’s adopted daughter, says of Bion, who wouldn’t read his mother’s books.

Zarin’s article, which also revealed L’Engle’s increasingly fragile mental state, did not square with what readers wanted to believe. Meg marries her childhood sweetheart (and Wrinkle co-protagonist) Calvin O’Keefe, who is a loving and devoted father to their seven children as the series progresses. He doesn’t cheat on her, and her kids aren’t bitter about her career. (If such a quotidian fate had met Meg, what would it mean for the rest of us poor schlubs?) For devotees of her non-fiction, the half-truths were a betrayal; for fans of her fiction, the profile served as a reminder that her creation was, ultimately, just a character.

Book: Listening for Madeleine by Leonard S. Marcus

This was to be timed for the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Wrinkle, but it is responding more directly to Zarin’s profile, which, coming just a few years before L’Engle’s death, seemed to have the last word. Rather than writing a straightforward biography, Marcus has woven together a collection of interviews with friends, students, editors, and family members—fans and minor figures in her life, as well as the people who were closest to her. (L’Engle’s adopted daughter Maria refused to be interviewed for the book, but her other daughter and two grandchildren gave long interviews.)^[2]

Sources

1. ↑ Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/21415720/madeleine-l'engle : accessed 21 March 2022), memorial page for Madeleine L'Engle (29 Nov 1918–6 Sep 2007), Find A Grave: Memorial #21415720, citing Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, Manhattan, New York County (Manhattan), New York, USA ; Maintained by Find a Grave .
2. ↑ https://newrepublic.com/article/110453/wrinkle-in-time-complexities-madeline-lengle-leonard-marcus

• Obituary in the New York Times, 8 September 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/08/books/08lengle.html (accessed 9 November 2014). This obituary gives her full name as Madeline L'Engle Camp - "Madeleine L’Engle Camp was born in Manhattan on the snowy night of Nov. 29, 1918. The only child of Madeleine Hall Barnett and Charles Wadsworth Camp, she was named for her great-grandmother, who was also named Madeleine L’Engle."
• Official website, http://www.madeleinelengle.com/
• Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Madeleine-LEngle
• https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/106.Madeleine_L_Engle Accessed 23 Feb. 2022
• Wikipedia: Madeleine L'Engle
• Wikidata: Item Q257261, en:Wikipedia