Raised in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, author Madeleine L'Engle began writing at a young age.[8] After graduating from boarding school in Switzerland, she attended Smith College, where she earned a degree in English.[9] In addition to writing, L'Engle also gained experience as an actor and playwright.[8] At age forty, she nearly abandoned her career as a novelist, but continued to write after her publication of Meet the Austins.[8]
L'Engle wrote A Wrinkle in Time between 1959 and 1960.[10] In her memoir, L'Engle explains that the book was conceived "during a time of transition".[11] 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."[11] This was in the spring of 1959. When asked for more information in an interview with Horn Book magazine in 1983, L'Engle responded
I cannot possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice. It was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant.[12]
L'Engle has also described the novel as her "psalm of praise to life, [her] stand for life against death."[12]
Additionally, L'Engle drew upon her interest in science. The novel includes references to Einstein's theory of relativity and Planck's quantum theory.[8]
A Wrinkle in Time is the first novel in the Time Quintet, a series of five young-adult novels by L'Engle.[13] Later books include A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time.[13] 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.[13] Throughout the series, family members band together to travel through time as they attempt to save the world from the grasps of evil.[13]
