Born into a dark, unhappy childhood and battling severe mental and physical health issues all through her adulthood, Lucy Maud Montgomery had a challenging private life. But she gave the world Anne Shirley — the freckle-faced, fiercely independent redhead as representative of Canada as the maple leaf. Anne of Green Gables is considered one of the greatest works in Canadian literature. Available in thirty-two editions, it continues to be immortalized on television, film and stage. Determined to succeed against all odds, Lucy Maud Montgomery published twenty-three books over a thirty-year period — her writing still resonates with readers today. Updated with the latest research — encompassing the last few years of Lucy's life and death — and beautifully illustrated with photographs, this biography recounts the story of Anne's creator and her contrasting public and private lives.

Montgomery's won letters, photographs and newspaper articles help illuminate the persona little known beyound the Anne of Green Gables legend.

"An exciting new collection, The L.M. Montgomery Reader assembles significant rediscovered primary materials on one of Canada's most enduringly popular authors throughout her high-profile career as the author of the resoundingly successful Anne of Green Gables (1908) and after her death. Each of its three volumes gathers pieces published all over the world to set the stage for a much-needed reassessment of Montgomery's literary reputation. Much of the material is freshly unearthed from archives and digital collections and has never before been collected in book form. The ninety selections appearing in this first volume focus on Montgomery's role as a public celebrity, giving a strong impression of her as a writer and cultural critic as she discusses a range of topics with wit, wisdom, and humour, including the natural landscape of Prince Edward Island, her wide readership, anxieties about modernity, and the continued relevance of "old ideals." These essays and interviews are joined by a number of additional pieces that discuss her work's literary and cultural value in relation to an emerging canon of Canadian literature, with nearly one hundred selections in all. Each volume is accompanied by an extensive introduction and detailed commentary by leading Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre that trace the interplay between the author and the critic, as well as between the private and public Montgomery. This volume, and the Reader as a whole, adds tremendously to our understanding and appreciation of Montgomery?s legacy as a Canadian author and as a literary celebrity both during and beyond her lifetime." --Publisher's description.

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) and Anne of Green Gables will always be associated with Prince Edward Island, Montgomery's childhood home and the setting of her most famous novels. Yet, after marrying Rev. Ewan Macdonald in 1911, she lived in Ontario for three decades. There she became a mother of two sons, fulfilled the duties of a minister's wife, advocated for copyright protection and recognition of Canadian literature, wrote prolifically, and reached a global readership that has never waned. Engaging with discussions on both her life and her fiction, L.M. Montgomery's Rainbow Valleys explores the joys, sorrows, and literature that emerged from her transformative years in Ontario. While this time brought Montgomery much pleasure and acclaim, it was also challenged and complicated by a sense of displacement and the need to self-fashion and self-dramatize as she struggled to align her private self with her public persona. Written by scholars from various fields and including a contribution by Montgomery's granddaughter, this volume covers topics such as war, religion, women's lives, friendships, loss, and grief, focusing on a range of related themes to explore Montgomery's varied states of mind. An in-depth study of one of Canada's most internationally acclaimed authors, L.M. Montgomery's Rainbow Valleys shows how she recreated herself as an Ontario writer and adapted to the rapidly changing world of the twentieth century. Contributors include Elizabeth Waterston (Guelph), Mary Beth Cavert (Independent), Margaret Steffler (Trent), Laura M. Robinson (Royal Military College), Caroline E. Jones (Austin Community College), William V. Thompson (Grant MacEwan University), Melanie J. Fishbane (Humber College), Katherine Cameron (Concordia University College), Emily Woster (Minnesota-Duluth), Natalie Forest (York), E. Holly Pike (Memorial-Grenfell), Linda Rodenburg (Lakehead-Orillia), Kate Sutherland (York), Lesley D. Clement (Lakehead-Orillia), Kate Macdonald Butler (Heirs of L.M. Montgomery Inc.).

Who ultimately is L.M. Montgomery, and why was there such an obsession with secrecy, hiding, and encoding in her life and fiction? Delving into the hidden life of Canada's most enigmatic writer, The Intimate Life of L.M. Montgomery answers these questions. The eleven essays illuminate Montgomery's personal writings and photographic self-portraits and probe the ways in which she actively shaped her life as a work of art. This is the first book to investigate Montgomery's personal writings, which filled thousands of pages in journals and a memoir, correspondence, scrapbooks, and photography. Using theories of autobiography and life writing, the essays probe the author's flair for the dramatic and her exuberance in costuming, while also exploring the personal facts behind some of her fiction, including the beloved Anne of Green Gables. Focussing on topics such as sexuality, depression, marriage, aging, illness, and writing, the essays strip away the layers of art and artifice that disguised Montgomery's most intensely guarded secrets, including details of her affair with Herman Leard, her marriage with Ewen Macdonald, and her friendships with Nora Lefurgey and Isabel Anderson. The book also includes rare photographs taken by Montgomery and others, many of which have not previously appeared in print. One of the highlights of The Intimate Life of L.M. Montgomery is the inclusion of a secret diary that Montgomery wrote with Lefurgey in 1903. This hilarious document is a rare find, for Montgomery's teasing banter presents us with a new voice that is distinct from the sombre tone of her journals. Published here for the first time, more than 100 years after its composition, this diary is virtually unknown to readers and scholars and is a welcome addition to the literature on this important figure. This volume fills in many of the blanks surrounding Montgomery's personal life. Engaging and erudite, it is a boon for scholars and Montgomery fans alike.

Beautiful contemporary photographs and historical images of Green Gables and other Anne sites, and a brief biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Years before she published her internationally celebrated first novel, Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery (1874-1942) started contributing short works to periodicals across North America. While these works consisted primarily of poems and short stories, she also experimented with a wider range of forms, particularly during the early years of her career, at which point she tested out several authorial identities before settling on the professional moniker "L.M. Montgomery." A Name for Herself: Selected Writings, 1891-1917 is the first in a series of volumes collecting Montgomery's extensive contributions to periodicals. Leading Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre discusses these so-called miscellaneous pieces in relation to the works of English-speaking women writers who preceded her and the strategies they used to succeed, including the decision to publish under gender-neutral signatures. Among the highlights of the volume are Montgomery's contributions to student periodicals, a weekly newspaper column entitled "Around the Table," a long-lost story narrated first by a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage and then by the man she wishes she had married instead, and a new edition of her 1917 celebrity memoir, "The Alpine Path." Drawing fascinating links to Montgomery's life writing, career, and fiction, this volume will offer scholars and readers alike an intriguing new look at the work of Canada's most enduringly popular author.

Celebrated as a novelist and made famous by her novel Anne of Green Gables and its sequels, L.M. Montgomery (1874-1942) is far less known for also writing and publishing hundreds of poems over a period of half a century.Although this output included a chapbook and a full-length collection in which she presented herself primarily as a nature poet, most of her poems appeared in periodicals, including women's magazines, farm papers, faith-based periodicals, daily and weekly newspapers, and magazines for children. As a shrewd businesswoman, she learned to find the balance between literary quality and commercial saleability and continued to publish poetry even though it paid less than short fiction. A World of Songs: Selected Poems, 1894-1921, the second volume in The L.M. Montgomery Library, gathers a selection of fifty poems originally published across a twenty-five-year period. Benjamin Lefebvre organizes this work within the context of Montgomery's life and career, claiming her not only as a nature poet but also as the author of a wider range of "songs": of place, of memory, of lamentation, of war, of land and sea, of death, and of love. Many of these poems echo motifs that readers of Montgomery's novels will recognize, and many more explore surprising perspectives through the use of male speakers. These poems offer today's readers a new facet of the career of Canada's most enduringly popular author.

Notions of identity have long structured women’s art. Dynamics of race, class, and gender have shaped the production of artworks and oriented their subsequent reassessments. Arguably, this is especially true of art by women, and of the socially engaged criticism that addresses it. If identity has been a problem in women’s art, however, is more identity the solution? In this study of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art in Canada, Kristina Huneault offers a meditation on the strictures of identity and an exploration of forces that unsettle and realign the self. Looking closely at individual artists and works, Huneault combines formal analysis with archival research and philosophical inquiry, building nuanced readings of objects that range from the canonical to the largely unknown. Whether in miniature portraits or genre paintings, botanical drawings or baskets, women artists reckoned with constraints that limited understandings of themselves and others. They also forged creative alternatives. At times identity features in women’s artistic work as a failed project; at other times it marks a boundary beyond which they were able to expand, explore, and exult. Bringing together settler and indigenous forms of cultural expression and foregrounding the importance of colonialism within the development of art in Canada, I’m Not Myself at All observes and reactivates historical art by women and prompts readers to consider what a less restrictive conceptualization of selfhood might bring to current patterns of cultural analysis.

After Green Gables brings to life a distinctly Canadian literary and intellectual association of writers.