Bibliography: Madeleine L'Engle's Other Novels

The Tesseract:
A Madeleine L'Engle Bibliography
Other Novels (and One Play)

(Adult and young adult novels, plus a one act play,
that don't fit neatly into any other series)

Note: unlike the various series pages, this page is in order of publication.
Since the books below are connected only loosely, a chronological order
from the characters' standpoint would be difficult at best.

 

18 WASHINGTON SQUARE, SOUTH:
A COMEDY IN ONE ACT

One act play. Plot and characters unknown, but it presumably takes place in New York City. (I'd appreciate a plot description and further publishing information from anyone who has actually seen and read this!)
FORMAT ISBN PUBLISHER ISSUED STATUS NOTES
unknown unknown/ none Baker's Plays 1946 out of print Rare.

 

ILSA

Adult novel. Henry Porcher falls in love with Ilsa Brandes despite enmity between their parents, and spends many years pining for her as they maintain a platonic friendship through a variety of catastrophic events. Henry Porcher is distantly related to the Renier family [The Other Side of the Sun, Dragons in the Waters ]. For more on this book please see my L'Engle FAQ page.

FORMAT ISBN PUBLISHER ISSUED STATUS NOTES
hardcover
323 pages		 unknown/ none Vanguard Press 1946 out of print Rare. Only edition of L'Engle's second novel.

 

AND BOTH WERE YOUNG

 Separated from her beloved artist father and stuck in a hated boarding school, Philippa "Flip" Hunter (later mentioned in A Severed Wasp ) secretly trains for a ski tournament with handsome war orphan Paul Laurens and her favorite teacher.

FORMAT ISBN PUBLISHER ISSUED STATUS NOTES
hardcover
232 pages		 unknown / none Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co 1949 out of print was in print through at least March 1965 (12th printing)
hardcover
? pages		 0688412610 William Morrow & Co Dec 1977 out of print possibly a publisher buyout or merger from Lothrop
mass-market
paperback		 0440902290 Dell Laurel-Leaf Mar 1983 available Revised edition. 6.71" x 4.18" x .71"
hardcover
241? pages		 0385292376 Delacourt Press Apr 1983 out of print Revised edition.
hardcover
241 pages, 22cm.		 0440002648 Delacourt Press Apr 1983 out of print Revised edition. Same as above except ISBN (not sure which was 4/83 release)
turtleback edition 060601439X Demco Media Dec 1994 probably available hardcover library binding with no dust jacket. Revised edition.

 

A WINTER'S LOVE


Emily Bowen falls in love with a family friend, Abe Fielding, as Emily, her husband Courtney and her daughter Virginia experience a winter of failure and relative poverty in a chalet above a remote Alpine village. Virginia's friend, Mimi Oppenheimer, later appears in A Severed Wasp  [1982].  Virginia Bowen Porcher later turns up in A House Like a Lotus as a writer with a mentally ill husband.

FORMAT ISBN PUBLISHER ISSUED STATUS NOTES
hardcover
? pages		 unknown / none Lippincott 1957 out of print
paperback
260 pages		 0345306449 Ballantine/ Epiphany Feb 1984 out of print
hardcover
? pages		 0877888892 Harold Shaw Publishers Apr 1997 available? probably revised

 

THE LOVE LETTERS
a.k.a. Love Letters

Fleeing her husband's harsh words after the accidental death of their son, Charlotte Napier seeks refuge and a "point of reference" in Portugal from her mother-in-law and the letters of a long-dead nun who loved unwisely. A scene from this book later turns up as a scene in a play Emma Wheaton rehearses in Certain Women.

FORMAT ISBN PUBLISHER ISSUED STATUS NOTES
hardcover
365 pages		 none;
LC 66-20170		 Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1966 out of print title: The Love Letters
paperback
329 pages		 0345306171 Ballantine / Epiphany May 1983 out of print revised; material added from original manuscript
hardcover
304 pages		 0877885281 Harold Shaw Publishers Oct 1996 available revised again; retitled Love Letters  (sans "The")
9.33" x 6.3"1 x .90"

 

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SUN

Elderly Stella Renier recalls the early days of her marriage in the South, when hooded men on both sides of the color barrier threatened Stella and the people she came to love. The history of the Renier family is detailed, although Simon Renier [Dragons in the Waters ] and distant cousin Henry Porcher [Ilsa ] are not mentioned, nor is Mimi Oppenheimer [A Winter's Love ], who is revealed in A Severed Wasp to be a Renier on her mother's side and a probable granddaughter of Stella.

FORMAT ISBN PUBLISHER ISSUED STATUS NOTES
hardcover
344 pages		 0374228051 Farrar, Straus & Giroux Mar 1971 out of print Dust jacket design by Ruth Ray
paperback
? pages		 0345306160? Ballantine / Epiphany May? 1983 out of print
large print hardcover
595 pages		 0786200898 Thorndike Press Dec 1993 available 8.70" x 5.74" x 1.27"

 

CERTAIN WOMEN

Emma Wheaton faces both her past and her future as she attends the bedside of her dying father, David Wheaton, who is obsessed with an unfinished play about the Bible's King David, whose life parallels his own. Canon Tallis [The Arm of the Starfish , The Young Unicorns , Dragons in the Waters ] has a cameo appearance. Charlotte Napier [The Love Letters] turns up, albeit not under her own name, as a character in a play Emma and her father appear in together.

FORMAT ISBN PUBLISHER ISSUED STATUS NOTES
hardcover
351 pages		 0374120250 Farrar, Straus & Giroux Oct 1992 available First edition; 9.32" x 6.30" x 1.16"
trade paperback
351 pages		 0060652071 HarperCollins Oct 1993 available reprint edition; 7.96" x 5.33" x .98"

 

THE OTHER DOG

A poodle named Touché L'Engle-Franklin can't understand why her master and mistress brought home a second dog, of that strange inferior breed known as "baby." Madeleine L'Engle, Hugh Franklin, and Jo Franklin (born 1947) appear with Touché in this picture book. A non-fiction afterword by Madeleine L'Engle recounts a little more of Touché's real-life history. (Touché appeared in the same Chekov play, The Cherry Orchard, in which Madeleine L'Engle met her husband, Hugh Franklin.)

FORMAT ISBN PUBLISHER ISSUED STATUS NOTES
hardcover
272 pages		 158717040X SeaStar Pub Co Mar 2001 available First edition;
0.38 x 11.68 x 8.83
Ages 4-

 

THE JOYS OF LOVE

In this early, rejected L'Engle novel, published posthumously, is the semi-autobiographical story of Elizabeth, a 20-year-old budding actress who accepts a scholarship apprenticeship at a summer stock theater company. Over a long weekend, she experiences love and betrayal. I'll have more to say about this book after I get a chance to read it!

FORMAT ISBN PUBLISHER ISSUED STATUS NOTES
hardcover
48 pages		 0374338701 Farrar, Straus & Giroux Apr 2008 available First edition;
8.4 x 5.7 x 1"
Ages 12 and up
audio CD
 1427204640 Macmillan Young Listeners
 Apr 2008 available Unabridged edition

Back to The Novels of Madeleine L'Engle page
Back to The Books of Madeleine L'Engle & biography page