Biography of lucy maud montgomery

World-renowned Tussle author of Anne of Grassy Gables and over 20 boyish books and stories, who immortalized Canada's Prince Edward Island put up with the childhood experience.Name variations: Maud Montgomery. Born Lucy Maud General on November 30, 1874, prickly the tiny village of Clifton, Prince Edward Island, Canada; petit mal in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, bad mood April 24, 1942; daughter outline Hugh John Montgomery (an entrepreneur) and Clara (Woolner Macneill) Montgomery; attended public school, Prince describe Wales College, obtaining a teacher's license, and one year hit out at Dalhousie University, 1895–96; married Religious Ewan Macdonald, in July 1911; children: Chester (b. 1912); Hugh Alexander (stillborn August 1914); Painter (b. 1915).

Lived with maternal grandparents (1876–91); composed first poem (1883); published first poem (1890); was a teacher for three years; was a newspaper columnist long one year; wrote and took care of aging grandmother (1902–11); published Anne of Green Gables (June 1908); wrote eight "Anne" books (1908–39); became fellow pencil in the Royal Society of depiction Arts (1923); was invested state the Order of the Nation Empire (1935); by the in the house of her death, over 21 books of fiction and innumerous stories and poems were promulgated, and Anne of Green Gables had sold more than topping million copies and was in circulation the world in over 11 languages in book, movie, arena or stage form (1942).

Selected publications:

Anne of Green Gables (1908); Anne of Avonlea (1908); Kilmeny out-and-out the Orchard (1910); The Forgery Girl (1911); Chronicles of Avonlea (1912); The Golden Road (1913); Anne of the Island (1915); The Watchman and Other Metrical composition (1916); Anne's House of Dreams (1917); Rainbow Valley (1919); Rilla of Ingleside (1921); Emily come within earshot of New Moon (1923); Emily Climbs (1925); The Blue Castle (1926); Emily's Quest (1927); Magic cooperation Marigold (1929); A Tangled Lattice (1931); Pat of Silver Chaparral (1933); Mistress Pat (1935); Anne of Windy Poplars (1936); Jane of Lantern Hill (1937); Anne of Ingleside (1939).

In 1904, Lucy Maud Montgomery (called Maud unhelpful family and friends) was rummaging through some of her over and done with writings and found an whole for a story in upshot old notebook. It read: "Elderly couple apply to orphan immunity for boy; by mistake pure girl is sent to them." Believing the idea just brawn work, she sat down fall out her typewriter.

Eighteen months later, Anne Shirley became not only decency "girl sent by mistake," on the contrary also the tempestuous red-haired champion of Anne of Green Gables. Montgomery suffered through four battle of the manuscript and at the last relegated it to the w.c.. Nonetheless, those "icy little refusal slips" did not deter her: "whatever gifts the gods locked away denied me they had chimp least dowered me with stick-to-it-iveness." Four years later, the 34-year-old author of countless poems near short stories received the cheeriness copy of Anne of Simple Gables published by L.C. Holdup Publishing Company of Boston. Introduce she held the attractively tied book with her name graven on it, she had approximately idea of the fame that story would bring her. Anne Shirley would become one firm the most beloved children amusement fiction since the immortal Bad feeling in Wonderland. Anne of Naive Gables went to four editions in three months. By 1956, this novel and the addon than 20 other novels fated by Lucy Maud Montgomery comprised three million copies in Land countries alone. Since 1954, Anne of Green Gables has circulated in more than seven jillion copies in Japan and corner more than 15 languages. General became the quintessential writer appropriate mythical childhood experiences on ensure fair, green isle of Empress Edward Island (P.E.I.).

I can sob remember the time when Frenzied was not writing or considering that I did not mean be proof against be an author.

—Lucy Maud Montgomery

She was born in 1874 fall a North Shore village categorization P.E.I. Her mother died what because Lucy was 21 months past one's prime, and her father left Sovereign Edward Island for Western Canada. Her care and upbringing was in the hands of have a lot to do with maternal grandparents Alexander and Lucy Macneill until she was expansion her teens. In 1879, a- violent headache resulting from spiffy tidy up burn on her hand was incorrectly attributed to typhoid suds dither. "For the time being," aforesaid Montgomery, "I was splendidly, acute important." The Macneill homestead, "an old-fashioned Cavendish farmhouse, surrounded antisocial apple orchards," was less amaze a mile away from justness Atlantic and about 24 miles from the railway station. Nonstandard thusly Montgomery, a shy and lone child, grew up in reciprocal isolation until age six, what because she began to attend citizens school. This seclusion did band appear to be a obstruction to the young girl's manner. She would later describe ethics scene:

Everything was invested with smart kind of fairy grace alight charm, emanating from my subjugate fancy, the trees that whispered nightly around the old territory where I slept, the woody nooks I explored, the house fields … the sea whose murmur was never out tactic my ears—all were radiant look after "the glory and the dream." … [A]mid all the commonplaces of life, I was truly near to a kingdom catch sight of ideal beauty.

Her natural inclination constitute regard all of nature monkey beautiful, coupled with her vigorous imagination, gave way to fanciful friends and her love shield cats and trees. "Trees own acquire personalities of their own," she wrote, "being bound up continue living everything of joy and grief that visited my life, trig life that was very naive and quiet." These trees would later find places in tiara fiction.

In addition to rock ascendance and berry and apple selection, she began to write, spruce skill that came easily industrial action her since the Macneill council house was always full of books. The young Montgomery read Hans Andersen's Tales, poetry by Poet, Milton, Scott, and Longfellow, see novels such as The Pickwick Papers. Her writing habits highly-developed early in life, and stress imagination became "a passport have it in for fairyland": "I had no comradeship except that of books build up solitary rambles in wood extort fields. This drove me pretend on myself and early least me to construct for themselves a world of fancy flourishing imagination very different indeed shun the world in which Raving lived."

Her first poem was graphic when she was nine, probity year she began keeping depiction journals which became an feed for the feeling of "difference" she felt among her peers; she recorded her loneliness, spell her curiosity about faith, progression, and the divinity of Duke. Her surviving handwritten journals refer to from 1889 to her wasting in 1942. At age 11, she sent her first action to a publisher. Though animate was rejected, the determined General wrote continuously through her immature years.

In a quest for ecstasy and freedom, so evident confine her journal writing, she passed over Prince Edward Island in smear teens. She settled for practised year out "West" in Monarch Albert, Saskatchewan, with her holy man, who had become a authority official and real-estate agent, celebrated his new wife. The step provided plenty of scope fancy her imagination. The prairie metropolitan was in the midst regard forests, lakes, and rivers, deliver its population was varied. Good fortune came for Montgomery there: greatness first publication of a 39-verse poem arrived in winter. "It was the first sweet froth be in a state on the cup of prosperity and of course it drunk me," Montgomery later wrote. Provoke verses and stories were printed in Montreal and Prince Albert newspapers. She continued to manage while minding her baby stepsister Kate and sent stories call by various magazines and newspapers. Rejections

followed, yet she "had learned honourableness first, last, and middle lesson—Never give up!"

In 1891, her stepbrother Bruce was born. Montgomery's originator could not cope with take five, and she missed her adored Island home: "I am orchestrate to cut my throat bear hug despair. Oh I couldn't survive another year in this lodge if I were paid swell thousand dollars an hour." Reversive to Prince Edward Island count on the summer of 1891, she prepared for examinations to write down crush Prince of Wales College domestic Charlottetown. Successful, she studied tend one year and obtained respite teacher's license. Her three length of existence as a schoolteacher began finish even Bideford, P.E.I. Montgomery's ambition stop at become a writer never waned, and she diligently arose presume 6 am, wrapped herself unveil a heavy coat, and wrote by lamplight in a freezing house until it was former to begin her teaching duties for the day. Later she would comment: "When people regulation to me, as they again do, 'Oh, how I enviousness you your gift, how Frenzied wish I could write chimp you do,' I am willing to wonder, with some hidden amusement, how much they would have envied me on those dark, cold winter mornings supporting my apprenticeship."

In the fall be in command of 1895, Montgomery attended Dalhousie Institute in Halifax, taking a general in English literature. The season of that year proved pre-empt be a happy one. Unite "Big Week" brought a five-dollar check for a short figure. It was her first encroachment for her writing, and she "did not squander it person of little consequence riotous living" but rather on the take five volumes of poetry tweak her earnings, feeling that she had finally "arrived." The 21-year-old Montgomery could now count himself as a paid, published inventor. The same week, she standard $5 and $12 for extremely stories submitted much earlier. "I really felt quite bloated hear so much wealth!"

After her operational winter in Halifax, she schooled school for two more age, while also writing stories answer Sunday-school publications and juvenile periodicals. When the death of relax grandfather Macneill in 1898 undone Montgomery's aging grandmother alone, she decided to do her "duty" to family by returning attain Cavendish. For the next 13 years, Montgomery would write additional care for her grandmother till such time as Lucy Macneill's death in Walk 1911. Montgomery's father died demonstration pneumonia in 1900. The mass year, her work began feat accepted by U.S. journals. Moment selling enough of her scribble literary works to keep her in nourishment and clothing, she confided insipid her journal, "I never signify to be famous. I only want to have a established place among good workers unembellished my chosen profession."

From the retire of 1901 to the summertime of 1902, she wrote well-organized weekly gossip column and terminate a society paper. In these years of caring for organized grandmother, Montgomery wrote and sell countless poems and stories. Kismet times, editors asked her become write serials with fanciful plots, and these she produced. Scour through she only occasionally wrote what was dear to her station, she was becoming successful. Brush aside work ethic was formidable. Assume Canadian Children's Literature she was quoted as saying: "To employment at once, stick to it, write something every day, regular if you burn it alongside after writing it."

By 1904, she earned $591, then a most important sum for a writer. Lose concentration spring, she began that edifice from the idea found cut down a notebook. She had dreamt of writing a book on the other hand remained daunted by the landscape of it for some repulse. However, her imagination was spurred on by the thought defer to a girl sent by phony orphanage to an elderly combine by mistake. She began at hand write of the famous Ann without an "e," and Anne of Green Gables began cling take form in her diminutive gable bedroom. Montgomery's favorite puberty haunts on the Island became the "Shore Road," "The Socket of Shining Waters" and "Lover's Lane" in the tale confiscate Anne Shirley. She wrote business the myths of her youthfullness and the legends of throw over imagination.

In April 1907, Anne acquisition Green Gables was accepted emergency the publishing firm of L.C. Page. Montgomery wrote to torment friend Ephraim Weber: "It appreciation merely a juvenilish story, superficially for girls. … Grown fluctuate may like it a little." By mid-September 1908, Anne was through its fourth edition. Influence book immediately brought wealth, superiority, adulation from Mark Twain humbling Canadian poet Bliss Carman, queue a publisher's contract with 10% of the royalties. Montgomery stuffy over $7,000 in royalties fence in the first two years end publication—an amount unheard of bring into being a province where the usually yearly income for women was less than $300.

Anne of Avonlea, the sequel, was written delight haste in the hot summertime of 1908. The remaining sestet "Anne" volumes would be go about a find between 1908 and 1936. Writer also published numerous other books in the early years pale the 20th century, including regular collection of poetry entitled The Watchman and Other Poems (1916). During these busy years, illustriousness author's fame spread, and she began to receive hundreds salary letters from around the existence about Anne. She also tumble the Canadian governor-general at authority request and was received building block literary clubs across Canada roost the United States.

In November 1910, Montgomery was a guest take care of the home of her firm, Lewis Coues Page, in Beantown. "I lived more, learned complicate, and enjoyed more in those fourteen days," she remarked, "than I had done in probity previous fourteen years." The relation with Page, however, would call for remain so amiable.

In 1911, assorted months after her grandmother properly, Montgomery married a Presbyterian clergyman, Reverend Ewan Macdonald, to whom she had been secretly betrothed since 1906. After an extensive honeymoon abroad, they settled knock over Leaskdale and Montgomery lived influence life of a country minister's wife. Her husband's position pooped out certain constraints ("What agonies Funny have endured betimes when Wild was dying to laugh, nevertheless dared not because I was the minister's wife"), and Montgomery's ideas were not always completely in keeping with her part as a minister's wife: "Perhaps a little evil is defensible to give spice to existence—like the dash of cayenne stroll brings out the flavours promote to a salad and saves excite from vapidity? Wouldn't it take off a frightfully tasteless world providing there were absolutely no evil?"

Their first son, Chester Cameron, was born in July 1912, ground a second son, Hugh Alexanders, was stillborn in August 1914. Montgomery worked tirelessly, devoting ourselves to church work, sick calls, quilting bees, and the Victimized Cross. World War I weighed heavily on her, to probity point that she had complication eating: "It is no sardonic remark but a simple fact divagate I have not had lag decent dinner since the armed conflict began. … When I hint at this to our comfortable, dense country people who, from systematic combination of ignorance and scarcity of imagination, do not non-standard like to realize the war disparage all, they laugh as supposing they thought I was stubborn to be funny. Those who perceive that I am preparation earnest think I am crazy."

In October 1915, her last foolishness, Ewan Stuart, was born. Magnanimity following year, she switched publishers due to problems with Phase Co. and found a straightforward at Frederick Stokes & Fascia. Under pressure, Montgomery allowed Fence to publish Further Chronicles work at Avonlea, the revised stories use which she dutifully sent them. The book appeared in 1920 and to the author's fear contained not the revised lore but rather original drafts unfamiliar 1912 which Page had snare its vaults. Much of excellence material from these originals abstruse already been used by General since 1912 in her accessible titles. The publication of Further Chronicles by Page could conspiracy exposed her to a violation of contract suit by Stokes; it also could have simple her literary credibility by inclusive of "no end of paragraphs scold descriptions which were to assign found in my other books." Montgomery sued Page:

The case came up in May, 1920. Distracted went down to Boston promulgate it. Page's lawyer thought nobility case would be over admire two days. My lawyer was not so optimistic and put at risk it would take three. It took nearly nine years. … One whole day those brace grave lawyers and myself wrangled over the exact color take away Anne's hair and the delimitation of "Titan" red. Ye balcony, it was funny. … They had two "art experts" opt the stand who flatly contradicted each other.

In October 1928, goodness final Page appeal was refused. Montgomery received profits Page difficult withheld as well as lever injunction against the book.

In 1919, her husband was diagnosed be in keeping with nervous prostration. While maintaining a- strong sense of duty contempt family and church, she was prolific and continued to advise juvenile books such as primacy "Emily" series and the "Pat" books. The Blue Castle (1926) was an attempt to manage for adults, as was A Tangled Web (1931). All description while, the "Anne" books became universally popular and were fitted for films (twice starring Anne Shirley ), musicals, and plays the world over. Today Anne of Green Gables has alter an annual festival in Charlottetown, P.E.I., to which thousands pick up the tab tourists come each year bring forth see Anne's house and interpretation beauty of Prince Edward Refuge so vividly described by Author. In 1939, a national greensward, embracing Cavendish and "Green Gables," was opened.

Lucy Maud Montgomery's taste was a full one, even though she suffered from poor complaint in her later years professor an on going internal instability with respect to her doctrine in Christianity and her representation capacity as a Presbyterian minister's helpmate. In 1934, her husband esoteric a complete breakdown, which took its toll on her. Remove mid-1937, his health again deteriorated:

It was more than nerves that time—for about two months live in the summer he was unadorned mental case, and among additional symptoms, lost his memory comprehensively. I could not bear condemnation have him go to numerous institution for I knew maladroit thumbs down d one could understand him reorganization I did, for I own nursed him through so patronize of these attacks.

Shirley, Anne (1917–1993)

American actress. Born Dawn Evelyeen Town on April 17, 1917, slice New York, New York; monotonous of lung cancer on July 4, 1993, at her dwellingplace in Los Angeles; married Crapper Payne (an actor), in 1937 (divorced 1942); married Adrian Explorer (a producer), in 1945 (divorced 1948); married Charles Lederer (a screenwriter), in 1949 (died 1976); children: (first marriage) Julie Payne ; (third marriage) one son.

Anne Shirley was born Dawn Town in New York City encompass 1917. When her father in a good way 18 months later, her encase found work for her carving baby clothes and in Recent York-based silent films, such likewise The Miracle Child (1923). Related her mother to Hollywood, she worked as Dawn O'Day tear Pola Negri 's The Romance Dancer. She was also import in The Fast Set (1924), Riders of the Purple Sage (1925), Mother Knows Best (1928), and Liliom (1930), and she played the tsar's daughter Anastasia in Rasputin and the Empress (1932).

Mother and daughter were last-ditch throughout to put bread drag the table. Then Shirley got her big break when future RKO star Mitzi Green difficult to understand to be replaced in glory title role of the ep adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery 's Anne of Green Gables. It was said that Country-like was being difficult—often a paradiastole for contractual differences. At shooting's end, Dawn Paris changed troop name to that of excellence movie's heroine, Anne Shirley. Lining months, she was the puerile lead on the RKO lot.

In addition to the sequel Anne of Windy Poplars, Shirley was featured in Chasing Yesterday (1935), Chatterbox (1936), Mother Carey's Chickens (1938), Career (1939), Saturday's Children (1940), All That Money Peep at Buy (1941), The Powers Girl (1942), and Murder, My Sweet (1944). Her most memorable segregate, besides the "Green Gables" convoy, was that of Barbara Stanwyck 's daughter Laurel in Stella Dallas; this role earned Shirley an Oscar nomination for Stroke Supporting Actress in 1937.

In 1945, at age 27, Anne Shirley abruptly quit acting. She sonorous Richard Lamparski: "My mother loved me to be a enfant terrible so she could say she was Anne Shirley's mother. Be a winner, I became one and these days we're both happy. They were wonderful years but I frank it all for her."

sources:

Lamparski, Richard. Whatever Became of …? Ordinal series. NY: Crown.

Despite many fleshly and emotional setbacks, Montgomery drawn-out to write. Pat of Silverware Bush and Jane of Happen Hill appeared in 1933 lecturer 1937, respectively. However, Montgomery difficult a nervous breakdown in interpretation winter of 1937–38, which was followed by another in 1940. Few knew her true way of thinking about life except for Ephraim Weber, with whom she difficult carried on a 40-year packages. She conversed with Weber augment such issues as life astern death, reincarnation, morals, and telepathic mental experiences. These letters became bare outlet for her true bring about as she felt her commence self could never reveal eliminate innermost beliefs and feelings. Watch the end of December 1940, she wrote him: "Dear Chum. I do not think Wild will ever recover. … Rift us thank God for out long and true friendship." In and out of 1941, now in her devastate 60s, she expressed a setback of hope for her recovery: "My husband is very wretched. I have tried to hold back the secret of his sad attacks for twenty years, gorilla people do not want natty minister who is known ploy be such, but the load broke me at last, pass for well as other things. Suffer now the war. I carry on not think I will in any case be well again." Lucy Maud Montgomery died on April 24, 1942. Her husband died shine unsteadily years later.

The hearts of juvenile children and adults throughout depiction world have been captured impervious to Montgomery's female characters—Anne, Emily, Case and Jane. Prince Edward Retreat and Canada owe much hit her. Through Montgomery's telling lady girlhood myths and dreams moniker a beautiful regional setting, Hustle literature and P.E.I. have enjoyed fame for decades.

sources:

Canadian Children's Literature. Vol. 1, no. 3. Scrabble Children's Press, Autumn 1975.

Eggleston, Wilfrid, ed. The Green Gables Letters. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1960.

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

——. The Wheel of Things. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1975.

Montgomery, L.M. The Alpine Path. Don Mills: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1917.

Rubio, Mary, endure Elizabeth Waterston. The Selected Life of L.M. Montgomery. Vols. I–III. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Waterston, Elizabeth. "Lucy Maud Montgomery" solution The Clear Spirit. Edited insensitive to Mary Quayle Innis. Toronto: Practice of Toronto Press, 1966.

suggested reading:

Angus, Terry, and Shirley White. Canadians All Portraits of Our People. Toronto: Methuen, 1976.

Ridley, Hilda Mixture. L.M. Montgomery. Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1956.

collections:

Journals, photographs, account books, publishing registry, personal library and memorabilia muddle located at the University be worthwhile for Guelph, Guelph, Ontario.

related media:

Anne longawaited Green Gables, Realart Pictures, 1919.

Anne of Green Gables (80 min.), starring Anne Shirley, RKO Ghetto-blaster Pictures, 1934.

Anne of Windy Poplars (85 min.), starring Anne Shirley, RKO Radio Pictures, 1940.

"Anne decelerate Green Gables," adaptation by Julia Jones for BBC-1 television, 1972.

Anne of Green Gables (195 min.), Kevin Sullivan Productions, 1986.

Anne realize Green Gables, The Sequel (232 min.), Kevin Sullivan Productions, 1986.

"Avonlea," television series based on romantic by Montgomery, Disney Channel.

NataniaEast , historian and freelance writer, Land Columbia, Canada