A short life of the author
Audrey Niffenegger (b. 1963) was born on 13 June 1963 in South Haven, Michigan. She is a visual artist, printmaker, and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has created several artist’s books and is a specialist in letterpress and fine printing.
Life and Career
The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003) — about Henry DeTamble, a Chicago librarian who has a genetic condition (Chrono-Displacement Disorder) that causes him to travel through time unpredictably and uncontrollably, and his wife Clare Abshire, whom he first met when she was six and he was thirty-six — sold over 7 million copies worldwide, spent over four years on the New York Times bestseller list, and was adapted into a 2009 film starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana, and an HBO series (2022).
The novel’s emotional power comes from using time travel not as science fiction but as a metaphor for the ways people are present and absent in relationships — the way grief, memory, and anticipation distort the experience of being with someone you love.
Her Fearful Symmetry (2009) — a ghost story set near Highgate Cemetery in London — was her second novel.
Key Works
- The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003)
- Her Fearful Symmetry (2009)
Collecting Niffenegger
The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003, MacAdam/Cage) — the small-press first edition — brings $50–$200. Large-press reissues bring less.