One of my favourite authors, Madeleine L’Engle, has died at the age of 88. I first encountered her work at primary school when I borrowed A Wrinkle In Time from the school library. I read it several times, and then forgot about her work until a few years back when I was working on an essay about principalities and powers in the apostle Paul’s writings and I came across a footnote in a commentary pointing to her book A Swiftly Tilting Planet and her portrayal of the Ecthroi. I borrowed that book from the library and was hooked again.
Since then I’ve bought a boxed set of her Time Quartet, and coincidentally read Many Waters at the same time as I was working on translating texts from Genesis 1-11 in a Pentateuch course. I thoroughly enjoyed her spiritual autobiographical work Bright Evening Star: Mystery of the Incarnation.
If you’ve never read any of her books, do yourself a favour and check some of them out. You might have to look in the ‘young adults’ section, though that’s how the books were marketed, and not necessarily whom they were written for.
Related links:
- Her official web site: www.madeleinelengle.com
- Obituaries at Episcopal Life Online, New York Times, and Reuters.
- Christianity Today has reprinted online their 1979 article Supernatural Sagas of Good and Evil about L’Engle along with a link to an interview and some other material.
