The hit science fantasy novel was released in 1962, but only after author L’Engle’s long struggle to get it published.
According to The Washington Post, A Wrinkle In Time was hated by publishers.
The author’s granddaughter, Charlotte Jones Voiklis, has spoken of how it gave her grandmother a crisis of confidence.
She said: “The trouble finding a home for it remained deeply a part of her. She never lost that vulnerability she felt [as] a struggling writer.”
A Wrinkle In Time is claimed to have been rejected 26 times before finally being accepted.
One publishers said: “Before submitting it elsewhere, I would advise the author to do a cutting job on it by half.”
L’Engle wrote in her journal: “Each rejection, no matter how philosophically expected, is a wound.
“I won’t destroy my book for money for some editor who completely misses the point, which this one obviously did.”
Eventually Farrar, Straus & Giroux took on A Wrinkle In Time, even though the publisher admitted he was “afraid”.
Published in January 1962, the book won the Newbury Medal just a year later.
Now Oprah stars in the big screen adaptation from Disney, which is battling Black Panther for No 1 at the box office, a result that will be revealed tomorrow.