Lucy Maud Montgomery

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Lucy Maud Montgomery CBE, (always called "Maud" by family and friends) and publicly known as L. M. Montgomery, (November 30, 1874–April 24, 1942) was a Canadian author, best known for a series of novels beginning with Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908.

Anne of Green Gables was an immediate success. The central character, Anne, an orphaned girl, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following.[1] The first novel was followed by a series of sequels with Anne as the central character. The novels became the basis for the highly acclaimed 1985 CBC television miniseries, Anne of Green Gables and several other television movies and programs, including Road to Avonlea, which ran in Canada and the U.S. from 1990-1996.

Lucy Maud Montgomeryca 1920 - 1930
Lucy Maud Montgomery
ca 1920 - 1930

Contents

[edit] Biography

Lucy Maud Montgomery, 1884 (age 10)
Lucy Maud Montgomery, 1884 (age 10)

Lucy Maud Montgomery was born in Clifton (now New London), Prince Edward Island on November 30, 1874. Her mother, Clara Woolner Macneill Montgomery, died of tuberculosis when Maud was a mere 21 months old. Her father, Hugh John Montgomery, moved to Saskatchewan when Montgomery was only seven years old. 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 in a strict and unforgiving manner. In 1890, Montgomery was sent to live in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, with her father and stepmother, however after one year she returned to Prince Edward Island to the home of her grandparents.

Birth place of Lucy Maud Montgomery
Birth place of Lucy Maud Montgomery

In 1893, following the completion of her grade school education in Cavendish, she attended Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown. Completing a two year program in one year, she obtained her teaching certificate. In 1895 and 1896 she studied literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

After working as a teacher in various island schools, in 1898 Montgomery moved back to Cavendish to live with her widowed grandmother. For a short time in 1901 and 1902 she worked in Halifax for the newspapers Chronicle and Echo. She returned to live with and care for her grandmother in 1902. Montgomery was inspired to write her first books during this time on Prince Edward Island. In 1908, she published her first book, Anne of Green Gables. Three years later, shortly after her grandmother's death, she married Ewan Macdonald (1870 - 1943), a Presbyterian Minister, and 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.

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

The couple had three sons, Chester Cameron Macdonald (1912-1964), (Ewan) Stuart Macdonald (1915-1982) and Hugh Alexander, who died at birth in 1914, perhaps inspiring the death of Anne Shirley's first child Joyce in her novel Anne's House of Dreams.

Montgomery wrote her next eleven books from the Leaskdale manse. The structure was subsequently sold by the congregation and is now the Lucy Maud Montgomery Leaskdale Manse Museum. In 1926, the family moved in to the Norval Presbyterian Charge, in present-day Halton Hills, Ontario, where today the Lucy Maud Montgomery Memorial Garden can be seen from Highway 7.

Lucy Maud Montgomery MacDonaldwife ofEwan MacDonald1874 - 1942
Lucy Maud Montgomery MacDonald
wife of
Ewan MacDonald
1874 - 1942

Montgomery died of congestive heart failure in Toronto in 1942. [2] She was buried at the Cavendish Community Cemetery in Cavendish following her wake in the Green Gables farmhouse and funeral in the local Presbyterian church.

Her major collections are archived at the University of Guelph, while the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island coordinates most of the research and conferences surrounding her work. 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.

It appears as though Montgomery was an admirer of the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth through the novels she wrote; in Anne of the Island two instances reveal knowledge of Wordsworth's works: "the glory and the dream" of youth is mentioned (from his "Ode: Intimations of Immortality") and also the "drinking in" of nature.

Montgomery was born on the same day as British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill.

[edit] Works

[edit] Novels

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

[edit] Short story collections

  • Chronicles of Avonlea (1912)
  • Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920)
  • The Road to Yesterday (1974)
  • The Doctor's Sweetheart (1979)
  • Akin to Anne: Tales of Other Orphans (1988)
  • Along the Shore: Tales by the Sea (1989)
  • Among the Shadows: Tales from the Darker Side (1990)
  • After Many Days: Tales of Time Passed (1991)
  • Against the Odds: Tales of Achievement (1991)
  • At the Altar: Matrimonial Tales (1994)
  • Across the Miles: Tales of Correspondence (1995)
  • Christmas with Anne and Other Holiday Stories (1995)

[edit] Poetry

  • The Poetry of Lucy Maud Montgomery (1887)
  • The Watchman & Other Poems (1916)

[edit] Non-fiction

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

[edit] Autobiography

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Lucy Maud Montgomery and Anne. InfoPEI. Retrieved on: December 22, 2007
  2. ^ Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery Volume V: 1935-1942 P. 399
    The primary cause of death on her certificate was "Coronary Thrombosis."

[edit] External links

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[edit] Organizations

[edit] Other information