Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quartet: Various Awesome Covers!

2 Unknown + 2 by Rowena Morrill

I have not been able to identify the artist responsible for the Wrinkle in Time and Wind in the Door paperback covers that I remember from when I was a kid. The name of the artist is not anywhere on or in the paperbacks themselves, and the internet doesn’t seem to know!

Someday hopefully someone will recognize the artist’s work by the work itself, and publish a statement online somewhere. (Mysterious artist! Whoever you are! I am nostalgic for your art! Come forth!)

Update: The internet knows now! The late Richard Bober did the cover art for A Wrinkle in Time. Still not sure about Wind in the Door though.

The covers for A Swiftly Tilting Planet and Many Waters are by Rowena Morrill. And here’s her original sketch of Charles Wallace on the unicorn, which was not a thing I at all expected to be floating around on the internet. (Thanks, internet! You’re awesome.)

See below for other cover art for L’Engle books in my collection.

Leo and Diane Dillon

I did not grow up with these, so I don’t have any nostalgia for them. They are nice, I guess, and the borders make them look vaguely art deco, but they also strike me as pretentious somehow. Especially the unicorn one.

Unknown 1982 Art

I like this cover. I wish I had the others from this set. No idea whose art it is.

Charles Mikolaycak

This is a fine-condition first edition hardcover… of a book I don’t particularly like.

I would like the cover art better if I could figure out who the figures in the top left are. I mean, maybe there were exactly four angels and fallen angels who were important in the book, but there were like 24 total, and other covers just include the yellow lion one, so I’m confused.

Jody Lee

I like these. I like the colors, the consistent design of the set, and the extent to which the cover tells the story inside rather than featuring only one or two elements of the story.

I also have a set of Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain with covers illustrated by Jody Lee.

Monica Elias (design) and
Robert Goldstrom (illustration)

I do not like this style. Why, why, did I buy this book?

Wait, I know. It was a knee-jerk reaction to seeing a cheap book with a cover I hadn’t seen before.

I mean, this book is obviously part of a long-term book cover illustration data-collection strategy—a strategy that completely doesn’t work anymore now that I don’t live in the US. In the US, there are a ton of cheap used books in good condition. In Singapore, I will never get my hands on the other three matching books in the series. And I don’t even like the art. And as I mentioned, I don’t even like this particular book in the series. Anybody wants it for free, be my guest. No, I will not mail it to you.

Cliff Nielsen

Ahhhh. I love these. Not as much as the unknown/Rowena covers, but these are friendlier and still full of majesty. I like the colors and consistent boxed layout, and of course the fantasy creatures. Someone must have told Cliff not to put an angel on Many Waters, otherwise there’d be wings on all four covers.

Ellen Raskin

The original cover design by Ellen Raskin was reused by Kathleen Breitenfeld for the 50th anniversary edition. Nice, right?

Others

Here are some fun lists with multiple covers.

• Comparative Cover Art: A Wrinkle in Time
• John Wallie: A Wrinkle in Time
• Geekmom: A Wrinkle in Time
• LJT Reads: Wrinkle in Time
• Jodan Library: Time Quintet

The Madeleine L’Engle database entry at isfdb has a ton of information on various editions.