Madeleine L'Engle

So I completely missed the news that Madeleine L'Engle passed away last week but now I'm quite heartbroken. I've only read the Time Quintet but that has been enough to secure L'Engles place in the pantheon; A Swiftly Tilting Planet has been one of my favorite books since I was in elementary school. They are the sort of books you can't really fall out of love with.

In the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Marygail G. Parker notes “a peculiar splendor” in Ms. L’Engle’s oeuvre, and some of that splendor is owed to sheer literary range. Her works included poetry, plays, autobiography and books on prayer, and almost all were deeply, quixotically personal.

But it was in her vivid children’s characters that readers most clearly glimpsed her passionate search for answers to the questions that mattered most. She sometimes spoke of her writing as if she were taking dictation from her subconscious [source].