Madeleine L'Engle

What failed

She nearly gave up writing in 1948 after a run of rejections. When her husband left acting they bought a general store to replace the income. On her fortieth birthday, in November 1958, a novel came back rejected, and she covered the typewriter, walked round the room and sobbed. Then the book she is remembered for went out to publisher after publisher through 1960 and none of them would take it — nobody could work out what it was or who it was for. Eventually her agent gave up and posted the manuscript back to her.

What happened next

She handed it to John Farrar in January 1961. Farrar, Straus and Giroux published it in 1962, and it won the Newbery Medal the following year.

The point

She usually said twenty-six rejections. She also said, in her own words, that when they had run through forty-odd publishers her agent sent it back. Her executor says she threw most of the letters away, so the number was always a memory rather than a count. She kept a few of the letters. The three the Post quotes are dated 25 August, 16 September and 10 December 1960 — which is the more useful fact, because it means the whole thing turned in about a year.