Everything about Lucy Maud Montgomery totally explained
Lucy Maud Montgomery, (always called "Maud" by family and friends) and publicly known asL. M. Montgomery, (
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. 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.
Biography
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.
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'd 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.
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.
Montgomery died of
congestive heart failure in
Toronto in 1942. 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 "") and also the "drinking in" of nature.
Montgomery was born on the same day as British prime minister
Sir Winston Churchill.
Works
Novels
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)
Poetry
The Poetry of Lucy Maud Montgomery (1887)
The Watchman & Other Poems (1916)
Non-fiction
Courageous Women (1934) (with Marian Keith and Mabel Burns McKinley)
Autobiography
(1917)
The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. I - V (1985-2004)Further Information
Get more info on 'Lucy Maud Montgomery'.
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