A Wrinkle in Time

A Wrinkle in Time is a science fantasy novel by American writer Madeleine L'Engle, first published in 1963. The story revolves around a young girl whose father, a government scientist, has gone missing after working on a mysterious project called a tesseract. The book won a Newbery Medal, Sequoyah Book Award, and Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and was runner-up for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. It is the first in L'Engle's series of books about the Murry and O'Keefe families. This book is also a traditional literature book.

Publication history

The book was written between 1959 and 1960. L'Engle wrote repeatedly about the writing of the story and the long struggle to get it published. In A Circle of Quiet (1972), she explains that the book was conceived "during a time of transition." After years of living in rural Goshen, Connecticut and running 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 and back again. 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. L'Engle was reading about quantum physics at the time, which also made its way into the story. When she completed the book in early 1960, however, it 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?"