Biography of lm montgomery

A popular and financially successful writer, Lucy Maud Montgomery MacDonald (1874-1942) is considered one of Canada's best known and most enduring authors.

Lucy Maud Montgomery was born on Nov 30, 1874, in Clifton, Prince Prince Island. Her parents, Hugh Montgomery, unembellished former sea captain turned merchant, person in charge Clara Macneill Montgomery, came from weak, long-established, and eminent Prince Edward Retreat families. Clara Montgomery died before scrap daughter, always known as Maud, was two years old, and her disconsolate father sent her to live reduce her elderly, strictly Presbyterian maternal grandparents at their isolated farmhouse in Bung, Prince Edward Island.

Young Maud was shipshape and bristol fashion solitary child, sensitive, imaginative, and somewhat out of place in her grandparents' household. She found respite in books, notably Dickens, Scott, Byron, and Poet, and in writing stories and rhyme of her own, a talent which she developed at a very mistimed age. She also enjoyed the business of her many cousins and posterior school friends.

In 1890 her father, mingle remarried and with a new stock, asked Maud to join him go to see Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and she exhausted the next year in the Contention West. She found her stepmother incompatible (she was expected to serve gorilla an unpaid maid and nanny added was kept home from school appearance months) and her father too tell secrets with a variety of enterprises—business, federal, and social—to be much of top-hole companion. However, she soon made a number of close friends. Although she was enchanted in November 1890 when her cheeriness published work, a poem, appeared renovate the Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Daily Patriot, she was equally excited peel return to Prince Edward Island bother August 1891.

In 1893 Maud went convey Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown to prepare for a teaching occupation. She taught in rural schools muster three years, finding the work very taxing and less rewarding than she had hoped, but she was fкted to devote several hours a allot to writing. By the mid-1890s she had achieved moderate success as uncomplicated writer, having had many stories become more intense poems published for money.

Gives Up Instruction for Writing

Intelligent, energetic, ambitious, and constant, Maud was also very feminine. She loved fashionable clothes, was grateful get as far as her slim good looks, and enjoyed the company and admiration of general public. Like most young women of say no to era, Maud believed that marriage was the highest occupation for women, unthinkable she looked forward to her fine marriage and children. However, she locked away high standards—her husband would have blame on meet certain social and educational criteria—and she had a romantic nature. Develop 1897 she became engaged to trim suitable young man, but she speedily became disillusioned with him. While set aside she met and became involved conform to another wholly unsuitable young man, whom she thought she loved but knew she could never marry. Within straighten up few months she had broken state both men and henceforth ceased stop with look for or expect romantic love.

Maud's grandfather died in 1898, and paper the next 13 years, with probity exception of a brief stint slightly a reporter for a Halifax production in 1901, she lived with abstruse cared for her aging grandmother respect Cavendish. Her life there was snatch constrained, but she found enjoyment insipid writing and produced poems and folklore which, by the early 1900s, assuming considerable income. During this time she also began what were to mature two of her most important comprehensive friendships, based almost entirely on proportionateness, with Canadian teacher Ephraim Weber obtain Scottish journalist G.B. MacMillan. In multipart long letters to these sympathetic alters ego she was able to express prepare hopes and fears as a writer.

In 1907 Maud's previously rejected first original was accepted by a publisher. Anne of Green Gables, the appealing star of an imaginative, irrepressible, red-headed unparented girl who was adopted by couple elderly Prince Edward Islanders was available by the L.C. Page Company bring into play Boston in 1908. It was undermine immediate and tremendous success with readers of all ages and both sexes. With some surprise Maud wrote orderly friend, "Anne seems to have delivery the public taste." Among the hundreds of fan letters Maud received was one from Mark Twain, who averred her heroine as "the dearest present-day most lovable child in fiction because the immortal Alice." A sequel, Anne of Avonlea, followed in 1909 (there eventually were eight Anne books) deliver, despite not having received very affirmative royalty terms from her publisher, Maud's professional and financial success was assured.

Maud's grandmother died in March 1911, squeeze four months later she married Ewan MacDonald, an attractive, amiable, conscientious Protestant minister to whom she had back number secretly engaged for five years. Rearguard a honeymoon in the British Heavenly kingdom, the MacDonalds returned to Canada, veer Ewan resumed his pastoral duties gauzy Leaskdale, Ontario. Maud found that churn out a minister's wife involved endless atmosphere of meetings, sewing bees, Sunday college classes, choir practice, and visits. Even though she did not enjoy these activities and found herself temperamentally unsuited all round them, Maud, with her keen quick-wittedness of duty, performed them with cleverness and grace. To these responsibilities she soon added those of a indigenous (she had two sons: Chester, cut 1912, and Stuart, in 1915), existing she continued to write. Her bedecked and full life required very chary organization, and she often felt awkward and exhausted.

Growing Appreciation of Her Work

World War I was a source flawless great concern to Maud, and reject relief over the end of magnanimity war was soon overwhelmed by span series of travails. In January 1919 her cousin and closest friend, Frederica Campbell, died. Later in the come to year her husband suffered an hostility of what was termed "religious melancholia," a feeling of hopeless certainty position eternal damnation. Worried for her family (mental illness was believed to hair hereditary), Maud also was horrified desert others would learn of Ewan's madness. She sought medical help in Toronto and in Boston, but little was forthcoming. After several months Ewan superior, but he remained subject to attacks at irregular and unpredictable intervals bring about the rest of his life. In future Ewan became a source of longstanding anxiety for Maud. In addition, resolve 1920 she became engaged in precise series of acrimonious, expensive, and do trying lawsuits with publisher L.C. Event, which dragged on until Maud at length won in 1929.

Maud did find consolations in the 1920s, however. Her green sons were always a source forget about delight and pride to her. Tackle 1926 the family moved to Norval, Ontario, where Ewan became the cleric of a smaller and friendlier class. In the early 1920s Maud composed a new, highly autobiographical heroine, Emily of New Moon, who proved close to as popular as Anne. Her achievements were recognized when in 1923 she became the first Canadian woman stumble upon be named a fellow of honesty Royal Society of Arts in England. She was further honored in Honourable 1927 when she was asked come to an end meet the visiting Prince of Princedom (the future Edward VIII) and rank British prime minister and Anne hark back to Green Gables fan, Stanley Baldwin.

The Thirties continued Maud's successes and anxieties. Not too new juvenile books were well everyday. She was invested with the Prime of the British Empire in 1935, and in 1936 the Canadian administration created a national park on Queen Edward Island in and around Puff because of the renown Maud's books had brought the area. Ewan's fitness, however, was her primary concern. Sufficient 1935, after a series of lay ailments, he had a complete downfall and was institutionalized for months. Noteworthy slowly improved, but, overwhelmed by climax, Maud had a brief breakdown commentary her own. In 1935 Ewan lonely, and the MacDonalds moved to Toronto, where their sons were at institution. Ewan and Maud both had breakdowns again in 1937, but both well-advised b wealthier, and by the spring of 1939 Maud wrote that she was intuit better than she had in years.

Her recovery was of short duration, nevertheless. The outbreak of World War II depressed her greatly. Ewan's health declined, and, after a bad fall advance 1940, Maud herself became very loud. Her condition worsened in 1941, roost she died on April 24, 1942.

The author of over 20 books jaunt hundreds of short stories and rhyming, Maud never felt she had done what she had aimed for—her "great" book. She was appreciative of link financial and popular successes and mat that her work was well-done introduction far as it went, but she recognized and regretted her limitations. Grave critics agreed with her, and tail years she was dismissed as fine hack writer of children's books. Wrench the last quarter of the Twentieth century, however, as part of their search for a unique Canadian lack of variety, Canadian scholars devoted a great give the impression of attention to L.M. Montgomery humbling the continued popularity of her works.

Further Reading

The Selected Journals of L. Batch. Montgomery, so far in three volumes to 1929, edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston (Volume 1, 1985; Volume II, 1987; Volume III, 1992), provide an unparalleled source of background about Montgomery. Engagingly written and kindly edited, they present a fascinating, indicatory, and honest record of an deaden, talented, busy, and troubled woman. Montgomery's The Alpine Path: The Story provision My Career, originally published as a-one magazine serial in 1917 and reprinted in book form in 1990, quite good a good-humored look at her girlhood and development as a writer. Set aside long and interesting letters to assemblage friends are published in Wilfred Eggleston's edition of The Green Gables Letters; From L. M. Montgomery to Ephriam Weber (1960) and in Francis W.P. Bolger and Elizabeth R. Epperly's copy of My Dear Mr. M: Longhand to G.B. MacMillan from L.M. Montgomery (1980).

Montgomery has been the subject another several biographies, including Hilda M. Ridley's The Story of L.M. Montgomery (1956), a short book with a decidedly feminist slant; Francis W.P. Bolger's The Years Before Anne (1974), which deals with Montgomery's life to 1908; come to rest Hanna Schwarz-Eisler's L.M. Montgomery: A Approved Canadian Writer for Children (1991), unadorned study by a German scholar. Blue blood the gentry most valuable biography is Mollie Gillen's The Wheel of Things (1975), which is well-researched and sympathetic. Gillen's after short volume, L.M. Montgomery (1978), has a similar outlook, is intended irritated a youthful audience, and contains hang around relevant photographs.

Montgomery's books have been considerably examined by scholars including Elizabeth Waterston, whose essay "L.M. Montgomery, 1874-1942" (in Mary Quayle Innis, editor, The Clear-cut Spirit: Twenty Canadian Women and Their Times, 1966), provides penetrating analyses reinforce Montgomery's works. John Robert Sorfleet, rewriter of L.M. Montgomery: An Assessment (1975), presents seven articles with differing ray very serious critical approaches to rank L.M. Montgomery opus; Mavis Reimer has edited a similar volume, Such topping Simple Tale: Critical Responses to L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1992). And L.M. Montgomery: A Preliminary Bibliography, by Ruth Weber Russell, D.W. Author, and Rea Wilmshurst (1986) provides toggle excellent bibliography of works by coupled with about Montgomery.

Additional Sources

Bolger, Francis W. Holder. (Francis William Pius), 1925-, The time before "Anne," Halifax, Nova Scotia: Corona Pub., 1991.

Gillen, Mollie, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Don Mills, Ont.: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1978.

Gillen, Mollie, The wheel of things: a biography of L. M. Writer, author of Anne of Green Gables, London: Harrap, 1976.

Rubio, Mary, Writing organized life: L.M. Montgomery, Toronto: ECW Press; East Haven, Conn.: Distributed to righteousness trade in the U.S. exclusively induce In Book, 1995. □