“In this world you've just got to hope for the best and prepare for the worst and take whatever God sends.”- L.M. Montgomery
As we head into Women’s History Month, it’s the perfect time to reflect on those women who have paved the way before us and explore some of the nuisances that informed their lives and work. Lucy Maud Montgomery’s career spanned decades; her written work is prolific, her characters such as Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables,are imaginative and inspiring, and the sense of place and time in which her stories take place, is often considered an idyllic escape for modern audiences. But behind the veneer of the romanticized world of invented places such as Avonlea, PEI, its author’s inner world was far from ideal.
As journalist Rosemary Counter explores in her 2024 article for Zoomer Magazine, titled The Mystery of Lucy Maud Montgomery, which was published in advance of Montgomery’s 150th birthday, the celebrated Canadian author possessed a tortured soul, often best expressed through her personal journals and at complete odds with the ever hopeful, romantic spirit of her most well known heroine.
“At 14, Montgomery read over her embarrassing childhood diaries and, to her eternal regret, burned them. She never made that mistake again and leaned into writing her entries. “She shaped the journals very, very carefully,” said Toronto Metropolitan University English professor Irene Gammel, author of the 2009 non-fiction book Looking for Anne of Green Gables. “She often went back, adding and subtracting, always careful and conscious of her posthumous legacy and reputation, right up until the days before she died.” Even though we’ll never know what she omitted, what remains is just what she wanted us to know, including every unbecoming mood and rantand insult.”- Counter, R (2024). The Mystery of Lucy Maud Montgomery. Zoomer, October/November 2024, 97-99.
You can read the rest of Rosemary Counter’s wonderful exploration of L.M. Montgomery’s inner life on her website.
Explore more about L.M. Montgomery's work and life via our blogs:
L.M. Montgomery And Anne: A Parallel Life
Lucy Maud Montgomery Turns 150
L.M. Montgomery: A Woman History Can't Forget
Lucy Maud Montgomery: A True Poet
Lucy Maud Montgomery's Varied Love Life
The Writings of Lucy Maud Montgomery
L.M. Montgomery: Nature As Solace
And find L.M. Montgomery's published journals, novels and more related merch on our shop site.
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