Meet the Austins
dust jacket to the 1960 edition
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| Author | Madeleine L'Engle |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | unknown (1960 edition) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Austin family |
| Genre | Young Adult |
| Publisher |
Vanguard Press, Farrar, Straus & Giroux |
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Publication date
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1960, revised 1997 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 191 pp (first ed.), 216 (1997 ed.) |
| ISBN | (1997 ed.) |
| OCLC | 35235132 |
| LC Class | PZ7.L5385 Me 1997 |
| Preceded by | A Full House: An Austin Family Christmas |
| Followed by | The Moon by Night |
Meet the Austins is the title of a 1960 novel by Madeleine L'Engle, the first of her books about the Austin family. It introduces the characters Vicky Austin and her three siblings, and Maggy Hamilton, an orphan.
Vicky Austin's noisy, loving, mostly-happy family is disrupted when the family's honorary uncle dies in a plane crash. His co-pilot was also killed, leaving behind a ten-year-old daughter, Maggy, who has no one to care for her. The Austins take Maggy in, and she proves to be a spoiled, troubled only child who had very little family life. Maggy encourages Vicky's sister Suzy to misbehave, which makes everyone's life more difficult. Meet the Austins is largely episodic; each chapter covers a specific incident such as Vicky's bicycle accident or a family vacation. Throughout the book Vicky comments on the changes her family experiences during this time, and the reader sees her growing self-awareness. Although Vicky will later appear in three novels that have fantasy and/or science fiction themes, there are no such elements in Meet the Austins.
Rounding out the family are Vicky's father, Dr. Wallace "Wally" Austin, a doctor in general practice; her mother Victoria Eaton Austin, a retired singer; an uncle, Douglas Austin, a painter who occasionally visits; Aunt Elena, actually a close family friend who is the Austins' connection with the orphaned Maggy; and Grandfather Eaton, a retired minister who lives in a converted stable on fictional Seven Bay Island.
Although Meet the Austins, as the name implies, is the family's first appearance in terms of publication date, a short, later book, The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas (1964), takes place five years earlier. Another short Christmas story about the Austins, A Full House: An Austin Family Christmas, takes place about a year before Meet the Austins. A Full House was first published as a short story in two of L'Engle's collections, and then issued as a picture book in 1999. Meet the Austins is followed, in terms of internal chronology as well as publication date, by the full-length novels The Moon by Night (1963), The Young Unicorns (1968), A Ring of Endless Light (1980) and Troubling a Star (1994). Suzy Austin appears as a married adult in A Severed Wasp (1982).
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