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Biography

L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery was born in Clifton, P.E.I., Canada in 1874. During her lifetime she wrote 23 books of fiction, one book of poetry, a book on courageous women, an autobiography, a life's worth of journals (of 5,000 pages), 450 poems and over 500 short stories. Of these contributions, her career is best known for giving Canadians (and the world) a beloved literary heroine, Anne of Green Gables, an imaginative, short-tempered, loving red-headed orphan in search of a home.

After the death of her mother in her early youth, her father left her in the care of her stern grandparents. Montgomery's refuge from loneliness was in her imagination, much like many of the heroines she was later to create. She was a storyteller from her early youth.

"I cannot remember when I was not writing, or when I did not mean to be an author. To write has always been my central purpose toward which every effort and hope and ambition of my life has grouped itself."

During a short period where she lived with her father in Alberta, she published her first poem in a local newspaper at the age of 15. She soon returned to Prince Edward Island to finish her schooling. After completing college, she had a short stint as a journalist, and then began to teach. In spite of a tumultuous love life during this period, her writing never quelled. In 1902 she began a lifelong correspondence with Ephraim Weber, a man with literary ambitions, and in 1903 she began writing to a second pen-pal, George Boyd Macmillan of Scotland.

In 1906 she became engaged to Ewan MacDonald, who was studying to be a minister. Unable to leave her grandmother, this engagement was extended until her death in 1911. During this period, Montgomery began work on Anne of Green Gables, which was published in 1908 to popular acclaim. A sequel was demanded immediately, and Montgomery produced Anne of Avonlea. In 1909, she began work on what she considered her favorite book, The Story Girl. It was published in 1911, the year of Montgomery's marriage to MacDonald. They honeymooned in England and Scotland and when they returned to Canada, it was not to P.E.I., but to Leaskdale, Ontario, where Ewan had accepted a position. She now had new responsibilities, that of a minister's wife. Still, she determined to continue her writing.

She was strained by World War I, an increasingly bad relationship with her first publisher resulting in a lengthy law battle, and her husband's severe depression. In spite of all this, she continued her daily writing, producing further stories on Anne as well as many others, including the Emily and Pat series and The Blue Castle. By the late 1930s, her personal troubles, illness and depression overwhelmed her. Even her journal writing failed to console her, and the advent of World War II was a further blow to her depressed spirits. She died in 1942, after months of not writing to either her pen-friends or in her journals, and was buried in Cavendish, P.E.I.

During her lifetime, Montgomery received a number of international honors for her writing, being made a Fellow of the British Royal Society of Arts (1923), a Companion of the Order of the British Empire and a member of the Literary and Artistic Institute of France (1935). Her legacy is continued today in the expanding critical re-evaluations of her works and life, translations of her books to scores of languages, the adaptations of her stories on film, television and stage, and the sustained appeal of her stories worldwide.

References for Biography:

Parry, Caroline. "L. M. Montgomery: A Biography." in Anne of the Island. Montgomery, L. M. New York: Bantam Books, 1998.
Waterston, Elizabeth. "Lucy Maud Montgomery: 1874 - 1942." L. M. Montgomery: An Assessment. Ed. John Robert Sorfleet. Guelph: Canadian Children's Press, 1976. 9-28.

Last Updated 03.28.04
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