By Clementina Verge 

Photo by Judith Petrovich

Famous and beloved for her children’s books, Madeleine L’Engle wrote her most famous stories while quietly living in a farmhouse still standing on West Street in Goshen. She was a Litchfield County resident for more than 50 years, until her death in Litchfield in 2007.

Born in New York City in 1918, L’Engle was a gifted pianist who graduated from Smith College with honors and acted in Greenwich Village. In 1952, already a mom to a daughter and pregnant with a son, L’Engle and her husband, fellow actor Hugh Franklin, moved to Connecticut where they later welcomed another child.

They purchased an 1800s farmhouse and named it Crosswicks, which served as the inspiration for her series of memoirs The Crosswicks Journal. 

Franklin left acting and to replace the lost income, they successfully took over a small local general store. This newfound rural life inspired L’Engle’s later works, including the Austin Family Chronicles. 

Ten years after moving to Goshen, her most famous novel, A Wrinkle in Time, was published, winning the Newbery Medal in 1963. 

She continued to write and earn honors for the remainder of her life, balanced between New York City and Goshen. In 1996, she was inducted into the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame. In 2004, President George W. Bush awarded her a National Humanities Medal, noting that her “works inspire the imagination and reflect the creative spirit of America.”

L’Engle’s legacy includes more than 60 published works, earning her recognition as one of the most influential authors of children’s fiction. —madeleinelengle.com