American author of novels, essays, short stories, poems, children’s books, science fiction. Perhaps best known for her “Time Fantasy” series of children’s books that include “A Wrinkle in Time,” she often writes of family love and moral responsibility.
She is the daughter of a respected journalist and a pianist and wrote her first stories at age five. An only child, she led a rich fantasy life amid affluent surroundings. Her mother was almost 40 when Madeleine was born, and, when she was young, her parents sent her to European boarding schools. Shy and introspective, she was not popular and developed great concentration while gathering material for her writing.
After publishing several novels in the late 1940s, she and her husband operated a general store in rural Connecticut and raised their family. Although she continued to write, she put her family first, and she was not successful at getting published Her now-famous, “A Wrinkle in Time” was rejected by 26 publishers in two years. When it was finally published it garnered public acclaim and a Newbery Medal in 1963, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1965 and was a runner-up for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1964.
She married Hugh Franklin, an actor, on January 26, 1946, whom she met during her brief career in the theatre after college; he died in September 1986. Together they have three children. She earned her B.A. with honors from Smith College in 1941 and did graduate study at the New School for Social Research from 1941-42 and Columbia University from 1960-61. She was a teacher with the Committee for Refugee Education during World War II. From 1966 to the present, she has been a librarian for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. She has also taught at various universities in the US. Her first novel, “The Small Rain,” was published in 1945 as “Prelude.” In the years since, she has written over 60 books.
In 2001, after years of writing novels, essays, fiction and poetry, often with a family, moral and metaphysical theme, she published her first picture book, “The Other Dog,” from a poodle’s perspective, a humorous look at how a dog might feel when a new baby comes into the family.
She died in Litchfield, Ct. on 6 September 2007.
Link to Wikipedia biography