A Wrinkle in Time is a young adult science fantasy novel written by American author Madeleine L'Engle. First published in 1962, the book won the Newbery Medal, the Sequoyah Book Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and was runner-up for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. The main characters – Meg Murry, Charles Wallace Murry, and Calvin O'Keefe – embark on a journey through space and time, from galaxy to galaxy, as they endeavor to rescue the Murrys' father and fight back The Black Thing that has intruded into several worlds.
The novel offers a glimpse into the war between light and darkness, and good and evil, as the young characters mature into adolescents on their journey. The novel wrestles with questions of spirituality and purpose, as the characters are often thrown into conflicts of love, divinity, and goodness. It is the first book in L'Engle's Time Quintet, which follows the Murry family and O'Keefe.
L'Engle modeled the Murry family on her own. B.E. Cullinan noted that L'Engle created characters who "share common joy with a mixed fantasy and science fiction setting". The novel's scientific and religious undertones are therefore highly reflective of the life of L'Engle.
The book has inspired a 2003 television film directed by John Kent Harrison, and a 2018 theatrical film directed by Ava DuVernay, both produced by The Walt Disney Company.
Background
Raised in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, author Madeleine L'Engle began writing at a young age. After graduating from boarding school in Switzerland, she attended Smith College, where she earned a degree in English. In addition to writing, L'Engle also gained experience as an actor and playwright. At age forty, she nearly abandoned her career as a novelist, but continued to write after her publication of Meet the Austins.
L'Engle wrote A Wrinkle in Time between 1959 and 1960. In her memoir, L'Engle explains that the book was conceived "during a time of transition". After years of living in rural Goshen, Connecticut where they ran a general store, L'Engle's family, the Franklins, moved back to New York City, first taking a ten-week camping trip across the country. L'Engle writes that "we drove through a world of deserts and buttes and leafless mountains, wholly new and alien to me. And suddenly into my mind came the names, Mrs Whatsit. Mrs Who. Mrs Which." This was in the spring of 1959. When asked for more information in an interview with Horn Book magazine in 1983, L'Engle responded
L'Engle has also described the novel as her "psalm of praise to life, [her] stand for life against death."
Additionally, L'Engle drew upon her interest in science. The novel includes references to Einstein's theory of relativity and Planck's quantum theory.
A Wrinkle in Time is the first novel in the Time Quintet, a series of five young-adult novels by L'Engle. Later books include A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. The series follows the adventures of Meg Murry, her youngest brother Charles Wallace Murry, their friend Calvin O'Keefe, and her twin siblings Sandy and Dennys Murry. Throughout the series, family members band together to travel through time as they attempt to save the world from the grasps of evil.
Publication history
Upon completion in 1960, the novel was rejected by at least 26 publishers, because it was, in L'Engle's words, "too different," and "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was really difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adults' book, anyhow?"
In "A special message from Madeleine L'Engle", L'Engle offers another possible reason for the rejections: "A Wrinkle in Time had a female protagonist in a science fiction book", which at the time was rare.
After trying "forty-odd" publishers (L'Engle later said "twenty-six rejections"), L'Engle's agent returned the manuscript to her. Then at Christmas, L'Engle threw a tea party for her mother. One of the guests happened to know J.C. Farrar of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and he insisted that L'Engle should meet with him. Although the publisher did not, at the time, publish a line of children's books, Farrar met L'Engle, liked the novel, and ultimately published it under the Ariel imprint.