Lucy Maud Montgomery Biography

Canadian writer, who became famous for her juvenile books, especially ANNE OF GREEN GABLES (1908) with its six sequels. The main character is a spirited, orphan girl, who finds home with an elderly brother and sister. Montgomery produced more than 20 novels and short-story collection. Anne of Green Gables was rejected by several publisher. Montgomery was 34 when it was finally accepted.

L.M. Montgomery was born at Clifton (now New London), Prince Edward Island. When she was two, her mother died. Her father, who was a merchant, remarried, moved away, and she was raised by her maternal grandparents in Cavendish. The place was isolated and her childhood was not so happy: she grew up in an atmosphere of strict discipline and punishments for slight reasons. She joined her father briefly in Prince Albert, but then returned to Prince Edward Island.

At an early age Montgomery read widely. She started to write in school and had her first poem published in a local paper at the age of fifteen. In 1895 Montgomery qualified for a teacher's licence at Prince Wales College, Charlottetown. During the 1890s she worked as a teacher in Bideford and at Lower Bedeque, both on Prince Edward Island.

In 1895-96 Montgomery studied literature at Dalhousie University, Halifax. She returned to Cabendish to take care of her grandmother and worked at a local post office. After her grandmother died, Montgomery married in 1911 Ewan MacDonald, the Presbyterian minister, and moved with him to rural Ontario. While caring for her grandmother, she wrote the first book of Anne series. It drew on her girlhood experiences. The idea was based on a notebook entry from 1904: 'Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for a boy. By mistake a girl is sent them.'

Anne of Green Gables captured the struggles and dreams of childhood. The sroty of the talkative, red-haired orphan, gained an immediate popularity. The sequels followed Anne's life from childhood to adulthood and rising a family. The initial volume has been filmed several times, adapted to stage and translated into some 40 languages.

Montgomery's success was shadowed by her husband's bouts of melancholy and a nine-year dispute with her publisher. In 1925 the family moved to Norval, near Toronto, and then in 1935, after her husband's retirement, to Toronto. During the late 1930s Montgomery suffered a dreakdown, and remained despondent until her death on April 24, in 1942.

Montgomery wrote several collections of stories and two books for adults. His other series characters include Emily, who appeared in three novels, and Pat, who was in two novels. At her death she left 10 volumes of unpublished personal diaries (1889-1942), whose publication began in 1985.

Montgomery's heroines are frequently motherless, but adventurous, imaginative and determined. Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables is a red-headed orphan, whose rebellious energy is connected to her red hair. Anne's development focuses on the conflict between imagination and propriery, and concludes with the ascendancy of decorum and practicality, a theme which its seven sequels continue to develop.