Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942) was the Canadian author of Anne of Green Gables, the story of a talkative, imaginative red-haired orphan adopted by mistake by an elderly brother and sister on Prince Edward Island. The novel and its sequels have sold tens of millions of copies and drawn readers from all over the world to the island.
Works
Anne of Green Gables
A Prince Edward Island childhood
Lucy Maud Montgomery, known as Maud, was born in 1874 in Clifton, Prince Edward Island. Her mother died of tuberculosis before Maud was two, and her father left her with her maternal grandparents in the farming village of Cavendish, where she grew up in a strict, lonely household, finding comfort in books, nature and writing.
She spent a year with her father in Saskatchewan, published her first poem at sixteen, then trained as a teacher and taught in several island schools. In 1898, after her grandfather's death, she returned to Cavendish to care for her grandmother and run the local post office, writing stories and poems for magazines.
Anne of Green Gables
In 1905 she found an old note in her notebook: an elderly couple apply for an orphan boy, and a girl is sent to them by mistake. From it she wrote Anne of Green Gables, which was rejected by several publishers before L. C. Page of Boston accepted it. Published in 1908, it was an immediate best-seller.
Mark Twain is said to have called Anne the dearest and most delightful child in fiction since the immortal Alice. Montgomery went on to write seven more books about Anne, as well as other series, including Emily of New Moon, partly based on her own youth.
Ontario
After her grandmother's death in 1911, she married Ewan Macdonald, a Presbyterian minister, and moved with him to Ontario, where they had three sons. She continued to write while carrying out the duties of a minister's wife, though her husband suffered from severe depression.
She kept a detailed journal all her life, published long after her death, which reveals the sadness and strain behind her public success. She died in Toronto in 1942 and was buried in Cavendish, near the farmhouse that inspired Green Gables.
Anecdotes
A long legal battle
Montgomery signed an unfavourable contract with her first publisher, L. C. Page, who kept a large share of her earnings and published a collection of her stories without her consent. She sued him and, after nine years of lawsuits, won in 1928.
The Green Gables house
The green-roofed farmhouse in Cavendish that belonged to cousins of her grandfather inspired the setting of the novel. It is now part of a national park and attracts many visitors, especially from Japan, where Anne has been hugely popular since a translation appeared in 1952.
Frequently asked questions
Is Anne of Green Gables based on a true story?
No, but it draws on Montgomery's own childhood in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, and on a note about an orphan girl sent by mistake to a couple who wanted a boy.
How many Anne books did Montgomery write?
Eight novels follow Anne from childhood to motherhood, from Anne of Green Gables (1908) to Rilla of Ingleside (1921), in which Anne's daughter is the heroine, plus collections of stories.
Where is Green Gables?
In Cavendish, on Prince Edward Island, Canada, where the house that inspired the novel can be visited.