•
Canon John Tallis –
Episcopal Canon. Tallis appears in four novels, alongside both the O'Keefe and Austin families as well as the Wheatons (in
Certain Women). Rather like a cross between
G. K. Chesterton's
Father Brown and
Ian Fleming's
James Bond, Tallis provides spiritual leadership and insight into the realms of crime and international intrigue in equal measure. The character is based on L'Engle's spiritual advisor at St. John the Divine, Canon Edward Nason West. To preserve West's privacy during his lifetime, L'Engle referred to him as Canon Tallis in her non-fiction as well as her fiction. The name is a reference to composer
Thomas Tallis, who composed the Tallis
Canon. Because of this namesake, Canon Tallis is nicknamed Tom or Father Tom. •
Adam Eddington – Marine biologist. Adam first appears in
The Arm of the Starfish working as an intern for Calvin O'Keefe. He is caught up in a power struggle between the O'Keefes and an unscrupulous industrialist vying for control of an emergent medical technology. Later, working with dolphins in New England, he comes into contact with Vicky Austin. More international intrigue later ensnares Adam and Vicky when she follows Adam to
Antarctica in
Troubling a Star. •
Zachary Gray – Student. Extremely affluent, disaffected young man, oscillating between his desires for redemption and self-destruction. Has complex relationships with both Vicky Austin and (later) Polly O'Keefe. Like Canon Tallis, he appears in four novels. Charming, exciting, unpredictable and emotionally needy, Zach brings out the best in Vicky and Polly, but they cannot save him from himself. •
Katherine Forrester (Vigneras) – Pianist. Main character of
The Small Rain (the first half of which was republished as
Prelude) and
A Severed Wasp. In
The Small Rain, Katherine Forrester is a gifted but socially isolated adolescent studying to be a concert pianist at a strict boarding school. Katherine reappears in
A Severed Wasp as an old woman (now Katherine Vigneras, from her marriage to her piano teacher and mentor Justin) looking back on her life and career while facing new dangers as she renews her acquaintance with Felix Bodeway, an aspiring violinist who later became an Episcopal bishop and is now semi-retired. Katherine Vigneras also appears very briefly in
A Ring of Endless Light playing a recital that Vicky Austin and Zachary Gray attend. In
A Severed Wasp, she has a portrait painted by Philippa Hunter, protagonist of
And Both Were Young. •
Emmanuele Theotocopoulos (known as "Mr. Theo") – Organist and teacher. Introduced in
The Young Unicorns, (1968, ), he is the semi-retired organist at the
Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City, and the piano teacher and mentor to the blind piano
prodigy Emily Gregory. Mr. Theo is excitable but warm-hearted, with true affection for and protectiveness of children and adolescents who come under his eye. In
Dragons in the Waters, Mr. Theo befriends Simon Renier, and later summons Canon Tallis (whom Mr. Theo calls one of his oldest friends) to come and help when Simon's presumed "Cousin Forsyth" is murdered. Mr. Theo normally expresses himself with great formalism and precision, but he is prone to
malapropisms such as "It is time that we leveled upon each other" and "You're barking up the right hydrant." Canon Tallis says in
The Young Unicorns that he met Mr. Theo in Paris; perhaps English is not his first language. Mr. Theo is described as a "small, old man" and he lives on Riverside Drive in a "large and dilapidated, but still elegant mansion." •
Emily Gregory – Pianist. Emily is the daughter of a renowned scholar of
Ancient Greece. Her mother is evidently deceased. Her father once rented an apartment in their house to two scientists visiting New York to work on the Micro-Ray. An intruder broke into the house to steal papers related to the design of the Micro-Ray, only to find Emily, aged ten. The intruder used an uncontrolled Micro-Ray to "temporarily" blind Emily so that she could not see his face, but the Micro-Ray destroyed her optic nerve and blinded her permanently, instead. In
The Young Unicorns Emily, now twelve, has resumed her study of the piano with Mr. Theo and is regarded as a
prodigy. She has received high-quality training in braille and mobility for the blind at the instigation of Dr. Hyde, the head of the Micro-Ray project. She attends the St. Andrews School, where the Austin children go while they live in New York City. The Austins rent the apartment in Emily's home where the two scientists—Dr. Austin's predecessors in the Micro-Ray project—lived, and where Emily was blinded by the burglar. "Dave" Davidson is employed as her reader and is responsible for helping her get about the neighborhood and looks after her generally. Emily has used her musician's understanding of sound to help her adapt to blindness and has a near-perfect memory for where objects had been placed—so much so that people ask her where they left things. When she recognizes the voice of the false Genie, she unmasks one of the principal villains of
The Young Unicorns—and solves the mystery of her blinding. In
A Severed Wasp, it is revealed that Emily is now known as Emily de Cortez, married to a conductor named Pio de Cortez, and, in Katherine Vigneras' opinion, "surely one of the best-known interpreters of South American music." As an adult, she has been discreet about her disability because, as Dave Davidson explains, "she wants to be known for her music, not as a blind pianist." •
Mimi Oppenheimer (called Mimi Opp) – Surgeon. She attends the same boarding school as Virginia Bowen, and stays with the family in the Haute-Savoie. She later appears as Katherine Forrester's neighbor and friend in
A Severed Wasp. As an adult, Mimi is a
surgeon who, despite being Jewish and a bit of an agnostic, is friends with several people at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, especially retired bishop Felix Bodeway and Suzy Davidson. Mimi's grandmother was one of the Renier family; she is thus related to Simon Renier of
Dragons in the Waters, Queron Renier of
A House Like a Lotus and Stella Renier of
The Other Side of the Sun. •
Josiah "Dave" Davidson – Dean. A somewhat troubled teenager at the time of
The Young Unicorns, Dave is a carpenter's son, a former member of the Alphabats gang, a former choirboy at St. John the Divine Cathedral, and the friend and sometime protector of the Austin children. He is employed to read to the 12-year-old blind pianist Emily Gregory and to help her get about. It is through Emily that he meets the Austins, as her father owns the house where the Austins are staying and she lives in an apartment there. In
The Young Unicorns Dave at one point says that Emily is the only person in the world that he loves, but his feeling toward her is that of a brother, not a romantic love. At the time of his encounter with the Austins, Dave has left the St. Andrews School and changed to a trade school where he studies electronics, because learning a trade is the "pragmatic" choice for him. At the end of the novel, his father having died, Dave moves in with the Dean of the cathedral, Juan de Henares and rejoins the Cathedral choir. It is implied that the Dean expects him to do more with his life than electronics repair. As an adult in
A Severed Wasp Dave is the Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, married to the former Suzy Austin, and a friend of Mimi Oppenheimer. •
Virginia Bowen Porcher – Writer. Virginia ("Vee") Bowen first appears in ''
A Winter's Love as the daughter of a woman who falls in love with another man during a difficult time in her marriage. She reappears in A House Like a Lotus'' as Virginia Bowen Porcher, Polly O'Keefe's favorite writer. Her husband, Henri Porcher, is a descendant of Henry Porcher of the early L'Engle novel
Ilsa, and institutionalized with a hereditary form of insanity. •
Frank Rowan – Publisher. Frank first appears in
Camilla Dickinson as Camilla's first love. He turns up again in
A House Like a Lotus as "the publisher of a small educational press in
Istanbul." By that point, he has lost his wife and his leg in an automobile accident in the United States. ==Other protagonists==