Lucy Maud Montgomery

L.M. Montgomery
L.M. Montgomery ca. 1935
Born	(1874-11-30)November 30, 1874 Clifton, Prince Edward Island
Died	April 24, 1942(1942-04-24) (aged 67) Toronto, Ontario
Occupation	Fiction writer
Nationality	Canadian
Education	Prince of Wales College, Dalhousie University
Period	1890–1940
Genre	Canadian literature, children's novels, short fiction, poetry
Notable works	Anne of Green Gables Rilla of Ingleside Emily of New Moon
Spouse	Ewen ("Ewan") Macdonald
Children	Chester (1912–1963) Hugh (1914–1914) Stuart (1915–1982)

Lucy Maud Montgomery OBE (November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942) was a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables. The book was an immediate success. The central character, Anne Shirley, an orphaned girl, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following.

The first novel was followed by a series of sequels with Anne as the central character. Montgomery went on to publish 20 novels as well as 530 short stories, 500 poems, and 30 essays. Most of the novels were set in Prince Edward Island, and locations within Canada's smallest province became a literary landmark and popular tourist site—namely Green Gables farm, the genesis of Prince Edward Island National Park. She was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1935.

Montgomery's work, diaries and letters have been read and studied by scholars and readers worldwide.

Early life

Lucy Maud Montgomery, 1884 (age 10)

She was born Lucy Maud Montgomery in Clifton (now New London) in Prince Edward Island on November 30, 1874. Her mother, Clara Woolner Macneill Montgomery, died of tuberculosis when Montgomery was twenty-one months old. Stricken with grief over his wife's death, Hugh John Montgomery gave custody to Montgomery's maternal grandparents. Later he moved to Prince Albert, North-West Territories (now Prince Albert, Saskatchewan) when Montgomery was seven. She went to live with her maternal grandparents, Alexander Marquis Macneill and Lucy Woolner Macneill, in the nearby community of Cavendish and was raised by them.

Montgomery's early life in Cavendish was very lonely. Despite having relatives nearby, much of her childhood was spent alone. Montgomery credits this time of her life, in which she created many imaginary friends and worlds to cope with her loneliness, with developing her creativity. The Maritimes were a mostly Protestant region at the time, and Montgomery inherited the values of the Protestant work ethic, emphasizing thrift, modesty and hard work.

Montgomery completed her early education in Cavendish with the exception of one year (1890–1891) during which time she was in Prince Albert with her father and her stepmother, Mary Ann McRae. In 1901, Montgomery wrote in her diary how at the age of 13 she had "early dreams of future fame" and submitted a poem for publication, writing "I saw myself the wonder of my schoolmates-a little local celebrity". Upon rejection, Montgomery wrote "Tears of disappointment would come in spite of myself, as I crept away to hid the poor crumpled manuscript in the depths of my trunk", going to write "Down deep down under all the discouragement and rebuff I knew I would "arrive' some day". In November 1890, while in Prince Albert, Montgomery's first work, a poem entitled "On Cape LeForce," was published in the Charlottetown paper, The Daily Patriot. She was as excited about this as she was about her return to her beloved Prince Edward Island in 1891.

The return to Cavendish was a great relief to her. Her time in Prince Albert was unhappy, for she did not get along with her stepmother and because by, "... Maud’s account, her father's marriage was not a happy one." In 1893, following the completion of her grade school education in Cavendish, she attended Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, and obtained a teacher's license. Montgomery loved Prince Edward Island, writing she was "very near to a kingdom of ideal beauty. Between it and me hung only a very thin veil". During walks alone out in nature, Montgomery started to experience what she called in her diary "the flash"-moments of contemplating the beauty of nature that gave her emotional ecstasy and what she considered the awareness of a higher spiritual power running through nature and her. She completed the two-year program in one year. In 1895 and 1896, she studied literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Writing career, romantic interests, and family life

Published books and suitors

Birthplace of Lucy Maud Montgomery

Upon leaving Dalhousie, Montgomery worked as a teacher in various Prince Edward Island schools. Though she did not enjoy teaching, it afforded her time to write. Beginning in 1897, she began to have her short stories published in magazines and newspapers. Montgomery was prolific and had over 100 stories published from 1897 to 1907.

During her teaching years, Montgomery had numerous love interests. As a highly fashionable young woman, she enjoyed "slim, good looks" and won the attention of several young men. In 1889, at 14, Montgomery began a relationship with a Cavendish boy named Nate Lockhart. To Montgomery, the relationship was merely a humorous and witty friendship. It ended abruptly when Montgomery refused his marriage proposal.

The early 1890s brought unwelcome advances from John A. Mustard and Will Pritchard. Mustard, her teacher, quickly became her suitor; he tried to impress her with his knowledge of religious matters. His best topics of conversation were his thoughts on Predestination and "other dry points of theology", which held little appeal for Montgomery. During the period when Mustard's interest became more pronounced, Montgomery found a new interest in Will Pritchard, the brother of her friend Laura Pritchard. This friendship was more amiable but, again, he felt more for Montgomery than she did for him. When Pritchard sought to take their friendship further, Montgomery resisted. Montgomery refused both marriage proposals; the former was too narrow-minded, and the latter was merely a good chum. She ended the period of flirtation when she moved to Prince Edward Island. However, she and Pritchard did continue to correspond for over six years, until Pritchard caught influenza and died in 1897.

In 1897, Montgomery accepted the proposal of Edwin Simpson, who was a student in French River near Cavendish. Montgomery wrote that she accepted his proposal out of a desire for "love and protection." and because she felt her prospects were rather low. While teaching in Lower Bedeque, she had a brief but passionate romantic attachment to Herman Leard, a member of the family with which she boarded. Of the men she loved, it was Leard she loved the most, writing in her diary:

"Hermann suddenly bent his head and his lips touched my face. I cannot tell what possessed me-I seemed swayed by a power utterly beyond my control-I turned my head-our lips met in one long passionate pressure-a kiss of fire and rapture such I had never experienced or imagined. Ed's kisses at the best left me cold as ice-Hermann's sent flame through every fiber of my being".

Following objections from her family, Montgomery broke off her relationship with Leard, who died shortly afterwards of the flu. In 1898, after much unhappiness and disillusionment, Montgomery broke off her engagement to Simpson. Montgomery no longer sought romantic love.

In 1898, Montgomery moved back to Cavendish to live with her widowed grandmother. For a nine-month period between 1901 and 1902, she worked in Halifax as a substitute proofreader for the newspapers Morning Chronicle and The Daily Echo. Montgomery was inspired to write her first books during this time on Prince Edward Island. Until her grandmother's death in March 1911, Montgomery stayed in Cavendish to take care of her. This coincided with a period of considerable income from her publications. Although she enjoyed this income, she was aware that “marriage was a necessary choice for women in Canada.”

Marriage and family

In 1908, Montgomery published her first book, Anne of Green Gables. An immediate success, it established Montgomery's career, and she would write and publish material (including numerous sequels to Anne) continuously for the rest of her life. Anne of Green Gables was published in June 1908 and by November 1909, the book had already gone through six printings. The Canadian media made much of Montgomery's roots in Prince Edward Island, which was portrayed patronizingly as a charmingly quaint part of Canada where the people retained old-fashioned values because everything moved there at a much slower pace. The American media went one better by suggesting all of Canada was backward and slow, arguing that a book like Anne of Green Gables was only possible in a rustic country like Canada, where the people were nowhere near as advanced as the United States. Typical of the American media's coverage of Montgomery was a 1911 newspaper article in Boston, which asserted:

"Recently a new and exceedingly brilliant star arose on the literacy horizon in the person of a previously unknown writer of "heart interest" stories, Miss Lucy M. Montgomery and presently the astronomers located her in the latitude of Prince Edward Island. No one would ever imagined that such a remote and unassertive speck on the map would ever produce such a writer whose first three books should one and all be included in the 'six best sellers'. But it was on this unemotional island that Anne of Green Gables was born...This story was the work of a modest young school teacher, who was doubtless as surprised as any of her neighbors when she found her sweetly simple tale of childish joys and sorrows of a diminutive red-haired girl had made the literacy hit of the season with the American public".

The writer was mistaken; Montgomery in a letter to a friend stated: "I am frankly in literature to make a living out of it". Furthermore, the British scholar Faye Hammill noted that in the books Anne is a tall girl and Montgomery was 37 at the time, which hardly made for a "young school teacher".

Shortly after her grandmother's death in 1911, she married Ewen (spelled in her notes and letters as "Ewan") Macdonald (1870–1943), a Presbyterian minister, and they moved to Ontario where he had taken the position of minister of St. Paul's Presbyterian Church, Leaskdale in present-day Uxbridge Township, also affiliated with the congregation in nearby Zephyr. Montgomery wrote her next eleven books from the Leaskdale manse that she complained had neither a bathroom nor a toilet. The structure was subsequently sold by the congregation and is now the Lucy Maud Montgomery Leaskdale Manse Museum. The Reverend MacDonald was not especially intelligent nor was he interested in literature and nature as Montgomery was. Montgomery wrote in her diary: "I would not want him for a lover but I hope at first that I might find a friend in him".

The Macdonalds had three sons; the second was stillborn. Montgomery believed it was her duty as a woman to make her marriage work, through she quipped to a reporter during a visit to Scotland that those women whom God wanted to destroy He would make into the wives of ministers. The great increase of Montgomery's writings in Leaskdale is the result of her need to escape the hardships of real life. During the First World War, Montgomery was horrified by reports of the "Rape of Belgium" in 1914, and she was an intense supporter of the war effort, seeing the war as a crusade to save civilization, regularly writing articles urging men to volunteer for the Canadian expeditionary force and for people on the home front to buy victory bonds. Montgomery wrote in her diary on 12 September 1914 about the reports of the "Rape of Belgium":

"But oh, there have been such hideous stories in the papers lately of their cutting off the hands of little children in Belgium. Can they be true? They have have committed terrible outrages and crimes, that is too surely true, but I hope desperately that these stories of the mutilation of children are false. They harrow my soul. I walk the floor in my agony over them. I cry myself to sleep about them and wake again in the darkness to cringe with the horror of it. If it were Chester!".

Montgomery celebrated every Allied victory at her house, for instance running up the Russian flag in the front of her house when she heard that the Russians had captured the supposedly impregnable Ottoman city-fortress of Trebizond in April 1916. Much to Montgomery's disgust, Ewan refused to speak about the war as she wrote in her diary "it unsettles him and he cannot do his work properly". Montgomery, a deeply religious woman, wrote in her diary: "I believe in a God who is good, but not omnipotent. I also believe in a principle of Evil, equal to God in power...darkness to His light. I believe an infinite ceaseless struggle goes on between them." In a letter, Montgomery dismissed Kaiser Wilhelm II's claim that God was on the side of Germany, stating the power responsible for the death of "little Hugh" (her stillborn son) was the same power also responsible for the "Rape of Belgium", which could not possibly be the power of God and good, and for this reason the Allies were destined to win the war. Montgomery's concept of a loving God for whom only good things came meant for her the same power responsible for calamities great and small such as the death of "little Hugh" and the "Rape of Belgium" could not be the work of God, and was instead the work of the same evil power equal to God.

Montgomery underwent several periods of depression while trying to cope with the duties of motherhood and church life and with her husband’s attacks of religious melancholia (endogenous major depressive disorder) and deteriorating health: "For a woman who had given the world so much joy, life was mostly an unhappy one." In 1918, Montgomery was stricken with and was almost killed by the "Spanish Flu" pandemic that killed between 50-100 million people all over the world in 1918-1919, spending ten days bed-ridden with the Spanish flu. In her diary on 1 December 1918, Montgomery wrote after a visit to Toronto: "Toronto was then was then beginning to be panic stricken over the outbreak of the terrible "Spanish flu". The drug counters were besieged with frantic people seeking remedies and safeguards". Montgomery wrote in her diary about being inflected with Spanish flu: "I was in bed for ten days. I never felt so sick or weak in my life", going to express thanks for surviving the ordeal. Montgomery's best friend Frederica Campbell MacFaralane was not so lucky and died after contacting the Spanish flu. After the First World War, a recurring character in Montgomery's journal that was to obsess her for the rest of her life was "the Piper", who at first appeared as a heroic Highlander piper from Scotland, leading men into battle, but who turned out to be the Pied Piper of Hamlin, a trickster taking away children from their parents forever. The figure of the Piper reflected Montgomery's own disillusionment with World War One and her guilt at her ardent support for the war.

MacDonald, a good Calvinist who believed in predestination was convinced that he was not one of "the Elect" chosen by God to go Heaven, leading him to spend hours depressed and starring into space, telling his wife that he wished she and their children had never been born as they were also not of "the Elect", and all of them were going to Hell when they died. MacDonald refused to assist with raising the children or the housework, and was given over to erratic, reckless driving as if he was deliberately trying to get himself killed in a car crash, as perhaps he was. Montgomery herself was driven to depression by her husband's conduct, often writing that she wished she had married somebody else. In February 1920, Montgomery wrote in her diary about having to deal with:

"A letter from some pathetic ten-year old in New York who implores me to send her my photo because she lies awake in her bed wondering what I look like. Well, if she had a picture of me in my old dress, wresting with the furniture this morning, "cussing" the ashes and clinkers, she would die of disillusionment. However, I shall sent her a reprint of my last photo in which I sat in rapt inspiration-apparently-at my desk, with pen in my hand, in gown of lace and silk with hair so-Amen. A quite passable woman, of no kin whatever to the dusty, ash-covered Cinderella of the furnace-cellear."

For much of her life, writing was her one great solace. In 1920, Montgomery wrote in her diary a quotation from the South African writer Olive Schreiner's book The Story of an African Farm which defined different types of love, including a "love without wisdom, sweet as life, bitter as death, lasting only a hour", leading her to write: "But it is worth having lived a whole life for that hour." (emphasis in the original). Montgomery concluded:

"My love for Hermann Leard, though so incomplete, is...a memory which I would not barter for anything save the lives of my children and the return of Frede [Frederica Campbell MacFaralane, her best friend]

Montgomery believed her spells of depression and migraine headaches she suffered from were both expressions of her suppressed romantic passions and Leard's ghost haunting her. Also, during this time, Montgomery was engaged in a series of "acrimonious, expensive, and trying lawsuits with the publisher L.C. Page, that dragged on until she finally won in 1929." In 1920, Montgomery was infuriated with the 1919 film version of Anne of Green Gables' for changing Anne from a Canadian to an American, writing in her diary:

"It was a pretty little play well photographed, but I think if I hadn't already known it was from my book, that I would never had recognized it. The landscape and folks were 'New England', never P.E Island...A skunk and an American flag were introduced-both equally unknown in PE Island. I could have shrieked with rage over the latter. Such crass, blatant Yankeeism!".

Montgomery stopped writing about Anne in about 1920, writing in her journal that she had tired of the character. By February 1921, Montgomery estimated that she had made about $100, 000 dollars from the sales the Anne books while declaring in her diary: "It's pity it doesn't buy happiness". She preferred instead to create books about other young, female characters, feeling that her strength was writing about characters who were either very young or very old. Other series written by Montgomery include the "Emily" and "Pat" books, which, while successful, did not reach the same level of public acceptance as the "Anne" volumes. She also wrote a number of stand-alone novels, which were also generally successful, if not as successful as her Anne books.

Later life

Leaskdale manse, home of Lucy Maud Montgomery from 1911 to 1926

In 1925, Ewen MacDonald became estranged from his folk when he opposed his church joining the United Church of Canada, and was involved in an incident when he nearly ran over a Methodist minister who was promoting the union; had he not been a minister, he would had almost certainly would had been charged with attempted murder. In 1926, the family moved into the Norval Presbyterian Charge, in present-day Halton Hills, Ontario, where today the Lucy Maud Montgomery Memorial Garden can be seen from Highway 7. In 1934, Montgomery's extremely depressed husband signed himself into a sanatorium in Guelph. After his release, the drug store gave Montgomery a "blue pill" intended to treat her husband's depression that was accidentally laced with insecticide (a mistake on the part of the drug store clerk) that almost killed him.

In 1935, upon her husband's retirement, Montgomery moved to Swansea, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, buying a house which she named Journey's End, situated on Riverside Drive along the east bank of the Humber River. Montgomery continued to write, and (in addition to writing other material) returned to writing about Anne after a 15-year hiatus, filling in previously unexplored gaps in the chronology she had developed for the character. She published Anne of Windy Poplars in 1936 and Anne of Ingleside in 1939. Jane of Lantern Hill, a non-Anne novel, was also composed around this time and published in 1937. Montgomery was greatly upset by World War II, calling the war in a 1940 diary entry "this nightmare that has been loosed on the world...unfair that we should have to go through it again". On 28 December 1941, Montgomery wrote to a friend:

"This past year has been one of constant blows to me. My oldest son has made a mess of his life and his wife has left him. My husband's nerves are even worse than mine. I have kept the nature of his attacks from you for over 20 years but they have broken me at last...I could not go out to select a book for you this year. Pardon me. I could not even write this if I had not been a hypodermic. The war situation kills me along with many other things. I expect conscription will come in and they will take my second son and then I will give up all effort to recover because I shall have nothing to live for."

In 1940, the Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King introduced conscription under the National Resources Mobilization Act, but with the caveat that conscripts could only be used in the defence of North America, and only volunteers would be spent overseas. Mackenzie King scheduled a referendum for 27 April 1942 to ask the voters to release him from his promise to only send volunteers overseas, which Montgomery alluded to in her letter mentioning "conscription will come in".

In the last year of her life, Montgomery completed what she intended to be a ninth book featuring Anne, titled The Blythes Are Quoted. It included fifteen short stories (many of which were previously published) that she revised to include Anne and her family as mainly peripheral characters; forty-one poems (most of which were previously published) that she attributed to Anne and to her son Walter, who died as a soldier in the Great War; and vignettes featuring the Blythe family members discussing the poems. The book was delivered to Montgomery's publisher on the day of her death, but for reasons unexplained, the publisher declined to issue the book at the time. Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre speculates that the book's dark tone and anti-war message (Anne speaks very bitterly of WWI in one passage) may have made the volume unsuitable to publish in the midst of the second world war.

An abridged version of this book, which shortened and reorganized the stories and omitted all the vignettes and all but one of the poems, was published as a collection of short stories called The Road to Yesterday in 1974, more than 30 years after the original work had been submitted. A complete edition of The Blythes Are Quoted, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre, was finally published in its entirety by Viking Canada in October 2009, more than 67 years after it was composed.

Death

Gravestone

On April 24, 1942, Montgomery was found dead in her bed in her Toronto home. The primary cause of death recorded on her death certificate was coronary thrombosis. However, in September 2008, her granddaughter, Kate Macdonald Butler, revealed that Montgomery suffered from depression – possibly as a result of caring for her mentally ill husband for decades – and may have taken her own life through a drug overdose. A note was found on Montgomery's bedside table which read, in part, "...I have lost my mind by spells and I do not dare think what I may do in those spells. May God forgive me and I hope everyone else will forgive me even if they cannot understand. My position is too awful to endure and nobody realizes it. What an end to a life in which I tried always to do my best." An alternative explanation of this document is provided in Mary Henley Rubio's 2008 biography Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings, which suggests that Montgomery may have intended it as an entry in part of a journal now lost, rather than a suicide note.

Montgomery was buried at the Cavendish Community Cemetery in Cavendish following her wake in the Green Gables farmhouse and funeral in the Cavendish United Church (formerly Cavendish Presbyterian church).

During her lifetime, Montgomery had published 20 novels, over 500 short stories, an autobiography, and a book of poetry. Aware of her fame, by 1920 Montgomery began editing and recopying her journals, presenting her life as she wanted it remembered. In doing so certain episodes were changed or omitted.

Legacy

Collections

The L. M. Montgomery Institute, founded in 1993, at the University of Prince Edward Island, promotes scholarly inquiry into the life, works, culture, and influence of L. M. Montgomery and coordinates most of the research and conferences surrounding her work. The Montgomery Institute collection consists of novels, manuscripts, texts, letters, photographs, sound recordings and artifacts and other Montgomery ephemera.

Her major collections are archived at the University of Guelph.

The first biography of Montgomery was The Wheel of Things: A Biography of L. M. Montgomery (1975), written by Mollie Gillen. Dr. Gillen also discovered over 40 of Montgomery's letters to her pen-friend George Boyd MacMillan in Scotland and used them as the basis for her work. Beginning in the 1980s, her complete journals, edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, were published by the Oxford University Press. From 1988–95, editor Rea Wilmshurst collected and published numerous short stories by Montgomery. Most of her essays, along with interviews with Montgomery, commentary on her work, and coverage of her death and funeral, appear in Benjamin Lefebvre's The L. M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 1: A Life in Print (2013).

Despite the fact that Montgomery published over twenty books, "she never felt she achieved her one 'great' book". Her readership, however, has always found her characters and stories to be among the best in fiction. Mark Twain said Montgomery’s Anne was “the dearest and most moving and delightful child since the immortal Alice". Montgomery was honoured by being the first female in Canada to be named a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in England and by being invested in the Order of the British Empire in 1935.

However, her fame was not limited to Canadian audiences. Anne of Green Gables became a success worldwide. For example, every year, thousands of Japanese tourists "make a pilgrimage to a green-gabled Victorian farmhouse in the town of Cavendish on Prince Edward Island". In 2012, the original novel Anne of Green Gables was ranked number nine among all-time best children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with primarily U.S. audience. The British public ranked it number 41 among all novels in The Big Read, a 2003 BBC survey to determine the "nation's best-loved novel". The British scholar Faye Hammill observed that Montgomery is an author overshadowed by her creation as license plates in Prince Edward Island bear the slogan "P.E.I Home of Anne of Green Gables" rather than "P.E.I Birthplace of L.M Montgomery. Much to Montgomery's own annoyance, the media in both the United States and Canada tried to project the personality of Shirley onto her.

Landmarked places

Montgomery's home of Leaskdale Manse in Ontario, and the area surrounding Green Gables and her Cavendish home in Prince Edward Island, have both been designated National Historic Sites. Montgomery herself was designated a Person of National Historic Significance by the Government of Canada in 1943.

Bala's Museum in Bala, Ontario, is a house museum established in 1992. Officially it is "Bala's Museum with Memories of Lucy Maud Montgomery", for Montgomery and her family stayed in the boarding house during a July 1922 holiday that inspired her novel The Blue Castle (1926). The museum hosts some events pertaining to Montgomery or her fiction, including re-enactment of the holiday visit.

Honours and awards

Montgomery was honoured by Britain's King George V as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), as there were no Canadian orders, decorations or medals for civilians until the 1970s.

Montgomery was named a National Historic Person in 1943 by the Canadian federal government. Her Ontario residence was designated a National Historic Site (NHS) in 1997 (Leaskdale Manse NHS), while the place that inspired her famous novels, Green Gables, was designated "L. M. Montgomery's Cavendish NHS" in 2004.

On May 15, 1975, the Post Office Department issued a stamp to "Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables" designed by Peter Swan and typographed by Bernard N. J. Reilander. The 8¢ stamps are perforated 13 and were printed by Ashton-Potter Limited.

A pair of stamps was issued in 2008 by Canada Post, marking the centennial of the publication of Montgomery's classic first novel.

The City of Toronto named a park for her (Lucy Maud Montgomery Park) and in 1983 placed a historical marker there near the house where she lived from 1935 until her death in 1942.

On November 30, 2015 (her 141st birthday), Google honoured Lucy Maud Montgomery with a Google Doodle published in twelve countries.

Works

Novels

Anne of Green Gables series

First page of "Anne of Green Gables", published in 1908

1. Anne of Green Gables (1908)
2. Anne of Avonlea (1909)
3. Anne of the Island (1915)
4. Anne of Windy Poplars (1936)
5. Anne's House of Dreams (1917)
6. Anne of Ingleside (1939)
7. Rainbow Valley (1919)
8. Rilla of Ingleside (1921)
9. The Blythes Are Quoted (2009) — was given to publisher the day before her death and lost. Finally found in mid–2000s.

Emily trilogy

1. Emily of New Moon (1923)
2. Emily Climbs (1925)
3. Emily's Quest (1927)

Pat of Silver Bush

1. Pat of Silver Bush (1933)
2. Mistress Pat (1935)

The Story Girl

1. The Story Girl (1911)
2. The Golden Road (1913)

Miscellaneous

• Kilmeny of the Orchard (1910)
• The Blue Castle (1926)
• Magic for Marigold (1929)
• A Tangled Web (1931)
• Jane of Lantern Hill (1937)

Short story collection

• Chronicles of Avonlea (1912)
  • "The Hurrying of Ludovic"
  • "Old Lady Lloyd"
  • "Each In His Own Tongue"
  • "Little Joscelyn"
  • "The Winning of Lucinda"
  • "Old Man Shaw's Girl"
  • "Aunt Olivia's Beau"
  • "Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's"
  • "Pa Sloane's Purchase"
  • "The Courting of Prissy Strong"
  • "The Miracle at Carmody"
  • "The End of a Quarrel"
• Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920)
  • "Aunt Cynthia's Persian Cat"
  • "The Materializing of Cecil"
  • "Her Father's Daughter"
  • "Jane's Baby"
  • "The Dream-Child"
  • "The Brother Who Failed"
  • "The Return of Hester"
  • "The Little Brown Book of Miss Emily"
  • "Sara's Way"
  • "The Son of his Mother"
  • "The Education of Betty"
  • "In Her Selfless Mood"
  • "The Conscience Case of David Bell"
  • "Only a Common Fellow"
  • "Tannis of the Flats"
• The Road to Yesterday (1974)
  • "An Afternoon With Mr. Jenkins"
  • "Retribution"
  • "The Twins Pretend"
  • "Fancy's Fool"
  • "A Dream Come True"
  • "Penelope Struts Her Theories"
  • "The Reconciliation"
  • "The Cheated Child"
  • "Fool's Errand"
  • "The Pot and the Kettle"
  • "Here Comes the Bride"
  • "Brother Beware"
  • "The Road to Yesterday"
  • "A Commonplace Woman"
• The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories, selected by Catherine McLay (1979)
• Akin to Anne: Tales of Other Orphans, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1988)
• Along the Shore: Tales by the Sea, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1989)
• Among the Shadows: Tales from the Darker Side, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1990)
• After Many Days: Tales of Time Passed, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1991)
• Against the Odds: Tales of Achievement, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1993)
• At the Altar: Matrimonial Tales, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1994)
• Across the Miles: Tales of Correspondence, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1995)
• Christmas with Anne and Other Holiday Stories, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (1995)
• The Blythes Are Quoted, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre (2009) (companion book to Rilla of Ingleside)

Short stories by chronological order

• Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories: 1896 to 1901 (2008)
  • "A Case of Trespass" (1897)
  • "A Christmas Inspiration" (1901)
  • "A Christmas Mistake" (1899)
  • "A Strayed Allegiance" (1897)
  • "An Invitation Given on Impulse" (1900)
  • "Detected by the Camera" (1897)
  • "In Spite of Myself" (1896)
  • "Kismet" (1899)
  • "Lillian's Business Venture" (1900)
  • "Miriam's Lover" (1901)
  • "Miss Calista's Peppermint Bottle" (1900)
  • "The Jest that Failed" (1901)
  • "The Pennington's Girl" (1900)
  • "The Red Room" (1898)
  • "The Setness of Theodosia" (1901)
  • "The Story of An Invitation" (1901)
  • "The Touch of Fate" (1899)
  • "The Waking of Helen" (1901)
  • "The Way of Winning Anne" (1899)
  • "Young Si" (1901)
• Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories: 1902 to 1903 (2008)
  • "A Patent Medicine Testimonial" (1903)
  • "A Sandshore Wooing" (1903)
  • "After Many Days" (1903)
  • "An Unconventional Confidence" (1903)
  • "Aunt Cyrilla's Christmas Basket" (1903)
  • "Davenport's Story" (1902)
  • "Emily's Husband" (1903)
  • "Min" (1903)
  • "Miss Cordelia's Accommodation" (1903)
  • "Ned's Stroke of Business" (1903)
  • "Our Runaway Kite" (1903)
  • "The Bride Roses" (1903)
  • "The Josephs' Christmas" (1902)
  • "The Magical Bond of the Sea" (1903)
  • "The Martyrdom of Estella" (1902)
  • "The Old Chest at Wyther Grange" (1903)
  • "The Osborne's Christmas" (1903)
  • "The Romance of Aunt Beatrice" (1902)
  • "The Running Away of Chester" (1903)
  • "The Strike at Putney" (1903)
  • "The Unhappiness of Miss Farquhar" (1903)
  • "Why Mr. Cropper Changed His Mind" (1903)
• Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories: 1904 (2008)
  • "A Fortunate Mistake" (1904)
  • "An Unpremeditated Ceremony" (1904)
  • "At the Bay Shore Farm" (1904)
  • "Elizabeth's Child" (1904)
  • "Freda's Adopted Grave" (1904)
  • "How Don Was Saved" (1904)
  • "Miss Madeline's Proposal" (1904)
  • "Miss Sally's Company" (1904)
  • "Mrs. March's Revenge" (1904)
  • "Nan" (1904)
  • "Natty of Blue Point" (1904)
  • "Penelope's Party Waist" (1904)
  • "The Girl and The Wild Race" (1904)
  • "The Promise of Lucy Ellen" (1904)
  • "The Pursuit of the Ideal" (1904)
  • "The Softening of Miss Cynthia" (1904)
  • "Them Notorious Pigs" (1904)
  • "Why Not Ask Miss Price?" (1904)
• Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories: 1905 to 1906 (2008)
  • "A Correspondence and a Climax" (1905)
  • "An Adventure on Island Rock" (1906)
  • "At Five O'Clock in the Morning" (1905)
  • "Aunt Susanna's Birthday Celebration" (1905)
  • "Bertie's New Year" (1905)
  • "Between the Hill and the Valley" (1905)
  • "Clorinda's Gifts" (1906)
  • "Cyrilla's Inspiration" (1905)
  • "Dorinda's Desperate Deed" (1906)
  • "Her Own People" (1905)
• [1905 to 1906, continued]
  • "Ida's New Year Cake" (1905)
  • "In the Old Valley" (1906)
  • "Jane Lavinia" (1906)
  • "Mackereling Out in the Gulf" (1905)
  • "Millicent's Double " (1905)
  • "The Blue North Room" (1906)
  • "The Christmas Surprise At Enderly Road" (1905)
  • "The Dissipation of Miss Ponsonby" (1906)
  • "The Falsoms' Christmas Dinner" (1906)
  • "The Fraser Scholarship" (1905)
  • "The Girl at the Gate" (1906)
  • "The Light on the Big Dipper" (1906)
  • "The Prodigal Brother" (1906)
  • "The Redemption of John Churchill" (1906)
  • "The Schoolmaster's Letter" (1905)
  • "The Story of Uncle Dick" (1906)
  • "The Understanding of Sister Sara" (1905)
  • "The Unforgotten One" (1906)
  • "The Wooing of Bessy" (1906)
  • "Their Girl Josie " (1906)
  • "When Jack and Jill Took a Hand" (1905)
• Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories: 1907 to 1908 (2008)
  • "A Millionaire's Proposal" (1907)
  • "A Substitute Journalist" (1907)
  • "Anna's Love Letters" (1908)
  • "Aunt Caroline's Silk Dress" (1907)
  • "Aunt Susanna's Thanksgiving Dinner" (1907)
  • "By Grace of Julius Caesar" (1908)
  • "By the Rule of Contrary" (1908)
  • "Fair Exchange and No Robbery " (1907)
  • "Four Winds" (1908)
  • "Marcella's Reward" (1907)
  • "Margaret's Patient" (1908)
  • "Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves" (1908)
  • "Missy's Room" (1907)
  • "Ted's Afternoon Off" (1907)
  • "The Girl Who Drove the Cows" (1908)
  • "The Doctor's Sweetheart" (1908)
  • "The End of the Young Family Feud" (1907)
  • "The Genesis of the Doughnut Club" (1907)
  • "The Growing Up of Cornelia" (1908)
  • "The Old Fellow's Letter " (1907)
  • "The Parting of the Ways" (1907)
  • "The Promissory Note" (1907)
  • "The Revolt of Mary Isabel" (1908)
  • "The Twins and a Wedding" (1908)
• Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories: 1909 to 1922 (2008)
  • "A Golden Wedding" (1909)
  • "A Redeeming Sacrifice" (1909)
  • "A Soul that Was Not At Home" (1915)
  • "Abel And His Great Adventure" (1917)
  • "Akin to Love" (1909)
  • "Aunt Philippa and the Men" (1915)
  • "Bessie's Doll" (1914)
  • "Charlotte's Ladies" (1911)
  • "Christmas at Red Butte " (1909)
  • "How We Went to the Wedding" (1913)
  • "Jessamine" (1909)
  • "Miss Sally's Letter" (1910)
  • "My Lady Jane" (1915)
  • "Robert Turner's Revenge" (1909)
  • "The Fillmore Elderberries" 1909)
  • "The Finished Story" (1912)
  • "The Garden of Spices" (1918)
  • "The Girl and the Photograph" (1915)
  • "The Gossip of Valley View" (1910)
  • "The Letters" (1910)
  • "The Life-Book of Uncle Jesse" (1909)
  • "The Little Black Doll" (1909)
  • "The Man on the Train" (1914)
  • "The Romance of Jedediah" (1912)
  • "The Tryst of the White Lady" (1922)
  • "Uncle Richard's New Year Dinner" (1910)
  • "White Magic" (1921)

Poetry

• The Watchman & Other Poems (1916)
• The Poetry of Lucy Maud Montgomery, selected by John Ferns and Kevin McCabe (1987)

Non-fiction

• Courageous Women (1934) (with Marian Keith and Mabel Burns McKinley)

Journals, Letters, and Essays

• The Green Gables Letters from L.M. Montgomery to Ephraim Weber, 1905–1909 (1960), edited by Wilfrid Eggleston
• The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career (1974; originally published in Everywoman's World in 1917)
• My Dear Mr. M: Letters to G.B. MacMillan from L.M. Montgomery (1980), edited by Francis W.P. Bolger and Elizabeth R. Epperly
• The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery (5 vols., 1985–2004), edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston
• The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery: The PEI Years, 1889–1900 (2012), edited by Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth Hillman Waterston
• The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery: The PEI Years, 1901–1911 (2013), edited by Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth Hillman Waterston
• The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 1: A Life in Print (2013), edited by Benjamin Lefebvre
• L.M. Montgomery's Complete Journals: The Ontario Years, 1911–1917 (2016), edited by Jen Rubio
• L.M. Montgomery's Complete Journals: The Ontario Years, 1918–1921 (2017), edited by Jen Rubio

Notes and references

Bibliography

• Bourgoin, Suzanne Michelle, ed. (1998). "Lucy Maud Montgomery". Encyclopedia of World Biography. Vol. 11 (Michael-Orleans) (2nd ed.). Detroit: Gale Research. ISBN 978-0-7876-2221-3. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
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• Heilbron, Alexandra (2001). Remembering Lucy Maud Montgomery. Toronto: Dundurn Press. ISBN 1-55002-362-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gammel, Irene (2008), Looking for Anne of Green Gables: The Story of L.M. Montgomery and Her Literary Classic, New York: St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-38237-5
• Kannas, Vappu (2015). "The Forlorn Heroine of a Terribly Sad Life Story": Romance in the Journals of L. M. Montgomery. University of Helsinki. ISBN 978-951-51-1772-4.
• McLeod, Carol (1983). Legendary Canadian Women. Hantsport, Nova Scotia: Lancelot Press. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Rubio, Mary (2008), Lucy Maud Montgomery: the gift of wings, Toronto: Doubleday Canada, ISBN 0-385-65983-0
• Rubio, Mary; Waterston, Elizabeth (1987), The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery Volume II: 1910-1921, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 9 780195 405866
• Rubio, Mary; Waterston, Elizabeth (1995), Writing a Life: L. M. Montgomery (PDF), Toronto: ECW Press, ISBN 1-55022-220-1
• L. M. Montgomery's Rainbow Valleys: The Ontario Years, 1911–1942. Edited by Rita Bode and Lesley D. Clement (2015). McGill-Queen's University Press

External links

• The Canadian Encyclopedia, Lucy Maud Montgomery
• L. M. Montgomery at Library of Congress, with 185 library catalog records

Texts, images and collections

• Works by Lucy Maud Montgomery at Project Gutenberg
• Works by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery at Faded Page (Canada)
• Works by L M Montgomery at Project Gutenberg Australia
• Works by or about Lucy Maud Montgomery at Internet Archive
• Picturing A Canadian Life: L.M. Montgomery's Personal Scrapbooks and Book Covers
• L.M. Montgomery Collection at the University of Guelph Library, Archival and Special Collections, contains her personal journals, scrapbooks, and more than 800 items
• Representative Poetry Online
• Lucy Maud Montgomery Google Doodle Video

Audio

• Works by Lucy Maud Montgomery at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Organizations

• The Lucy Maud Montgomery Society of Ontario
• The L.M. Montgomery Literary Society This site includes information about Montgomery's works and life and research from the newsletter, The Shining Scroll.
• L.M. Montgomery Institute
• L. M. Montgomery Research Centre Highlights the extensive L.M. Montgomery collection at the University of Guelph Library Archival & Special Collections.
• Leaskdale Manse National Historic Site of Canada. Canadian Register of Historic Places. Retrieved September 20, 2015.
• L.M. Montgomery Online Formerly the L.M. Montgomery Research Group, this site includes a blog, extensive lists of primary and secondary materials, detailed information about Montgomery's publishing history, and a filmography of screen adaptations of Montgomery texts.