A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, Dell Laurel-Leaf

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1918–2007) was rejected by at least 26 publishers before Ariel Books finally accepted it in 1962. The science fiction novel went on to win the Newbery Medal, the Sequoyah Book Award and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, has sold over ten million copies, and was made into a movie twice.

Shown here is the 1976 paperback reissue by Dell/Laurel-Leaf as featured in the fifth season of Stranger Things: it’s the edition owned and cherished by Holly Wheeler (played by Nell Fisher).

“Now, don’t be frightened, loves,” Mrs. Whatsit said. Her plump little body began to shimmer, to quiver, to shift. The wild colors of her clothes became muted, whitened. The pudding-bag shape stretched, lengthened, merged. And suddenly before the children was a creature more beautiful than any Meg had even imagined, and the beauty lay in far more than the outward description. Outwardly Mrs. Whatsit was surely no longer a Mrs. Whatsit. She was a marble white body with powerful flanks, something like a horse but at the same time completely unlike a horse, for from the magnificently modeled back sprang a nobly formed torso, arms, and a head resembling a man’s, but a man with a perfection of dignity and virtue, an exaltation of joy such as Meg had never before seen.

In 2023, Amory Sivertson of WBUR’s Endless Thread podcast was able to finally identify the artist responsible for the cover art: it’s Richard Bober (1943–2022). The designer who did the cover typography featuring all-caps Robur continues to be uncredited.

[More info on ISFDB]