Lucy Maud Montgomery, born on November 30, 1874, and died on April 24, 1942, was a Canadian writer who published books, essays, short stories, and poems. She began writing in 1908 with the novel Anne of Green Gables.

Over her lifetime, she wrote 20 novels and more than 1,000 short stories and poems. She also wrote many essays. Anne of Green Gables became very popular quickly. The main character, Anne Shirley, an orphan, made Montgomery famous and gave her a worldwide audience. Most of her novels were set on Prince Edward Island, a small province in Canada. Places there, such as Green Gables farm, became famous and are now part of Prince Edward Island National Park.

Montgomery’s books, diaries, and letters are studied by people around the world. The L. M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island focuses on researching her life, works, and influence.

Early life and education

L.M. Montgomery was born in New London, Prince Edward Island, Canada, on November 30, 1874. Her mother, Clara Woolner (née Macneill) Montgomery (1853–1876), died of tuberculosis (TB) when Maud was 21 months old. Her father, Hugh John Montgomery (1841–1900), was very sad and placed Maud in the care of her maternal grandparents, though he stayed nearby. When Maud was seven, her father moved to Prince Albert, North-West Territories (now Prince Albert, Saskatchewan). From then on, Maud was raised by her grandparents, Alexander Marquis Macneill and Lucy Woolner Macneill, in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island.

Maud’s early life in Cavendish was lonely. Even though she had relatives nearby, she often spent time alone. To cope with her loneliness, she created imaginary friends and worlds. She said this time helped her develop her creativity. Her imaginary friends were named Katie Maurice and Lucy Gray, and they lived in the "fairy room" behind a bookcase in the drawing room. During a church service, Maud asked her aunt where her dead mother was. Her aunt pointed upward, and Maud saw a trap door in the church’s ceiling. This made her wonder why the minister did not use a ladder to retrieve her mother from the ceiling.

In 1887, at age 13, Maud wrote in her diary that she had "early dreams of future fame." She submitted a poem for publication and wrote, "I saw myself the wonder of my schoolmates—a little local celebrity." After her poem was rejected, she wrote, "Tears of disappointment came even though I tried to hide them, as I tucked the crumpled manuscript deep into my trunk." Later, she wrote, "deep down under all the discouragement and rejection, I knew I would 'arrive' someday."

After finishing her education in Cavendish, Maud spent one year (1890) in Prince Albert with her father and stepmother, Mary Ann McRae (1863–1910), who married in 1887. While in Prince Albert, Maud’s first work, a poem titled "On Cape LeForce," was published in the Charlottetown newspaper The Daily Patriot. She was as excited about this as she was about returning to Prince Edward Island in 1891. Before returning, she wrote another article for the newspaper about visiting a First Nations camp on the Great Plains. She often saw Blackfeet and Plains Cree people in Prince Albert and wrote that many on the Prairies were more handsome and attractive than those she had seen in the Maritimes.

Maud’s return to Cavendish was a relief. Her time in Prince Albert was difficult because she did not get along with her stepmother. Maud said her father’s marriage was not a happy one.

In 1893, Maud attended Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown to earn a teacher’s license. She loved Prince Edward Island. During walks alone through the peaceful countryside, she began to experience what she called "the flash"—a moment of calm and clarity when she felt strong emotions and was inspired by the awareness of a higher spiritual power in nature. These experiences were later described in the character Emily Byrd Starr in the Emily of New Moon trilogy and also influenced her descriptions of Anne Shirley’s connection with nature. In 1905, Maud wrote in her journal, "amid the commonplaces of life, I was very near to a kingdom of ideal beauty. Between it and me hung only a thin veil. I could never quite draw it aside, but sometimes a wind fluttered it. I seemed to catch a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond—only a glimpse—but those glimpses had always made life worthwhile." A deeply spiritual person, Maud found the moments when she experienced "the flash" to be some of the most beautiful, moving, and intense in her life.

Maud completed the two-year teaching program in Charlottetown in one year. In 1895 and 1896, she studied literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Writing career, romantic interests, and family life

After leaving Dalhousie, Montgomery worked as a teacher in many schools on Prince Edward Island. Even though she did not enjoy teaching, it gave her time to write. Beginning in 1897, her short stories were published in magazines and newspapers. Montgomery was a very productive writer, and she published over 100 stories between 1897 and 1907.

During her teaching years, Montgomery had many people who were interested in dating her. As a young woman who was very fashionable, she had "slim, good looks" and attracted the attention of several young men. In 1889, Montgomery started a relationship with a boy from Cavendish named Nate Lockhart. To her, the relationship was just a friendly and fun friendship. It ended quickly when Montgomery refused his marriage proposal.

In the early 1890s, Montgomery faced unwanted attention from John A. Mustard and Will Pritchard. Mustard, who was her teacher, became her suitor and tried to impress her with his knowledge of religious topics. He often talked about ideas like predestination and other serious religious matters, which did not interest Montgomery. Around the same time, Montgomery became friends with the brother of her friend Laura Pritchard. This friendship was more pleasant, but he felt more for her than she did for him. When Pritchard wanted to take their friendship further, Montgomery refused. She turned down both marriage proposals because she found Mustard too narrow-minded and saw Pritchard as only a good friend. She ended the period of flirtation when she moved to Prince Edward Island. She and Pritchard continued to write letters to each other for over six years, until he died of influenza in 1897.

In 1897, Montgomery received a proposal from Edwin Simpson, a student near Cavendish. She wrote that she accepted his proposal because she wanted "love and protection" and felt her future was uncertain. Montgomery later disliked Simpson, who she thought was overly self-centered and vain. While teaching in Lower Bedeque, she had a brief but intense relationship with Herman Leard, a member of the family she stayed with. (Leard was already engaged to a neighbor named Ettie Schurman while he was involved with Montgomery.) Of all the men she loved, she loved Leard the most, writing in her diary:

"Hermann suddenly bent his head and his lips touched my face. I cannot tell what possessed me—I seemed swayed by a power utterly beyond my control—I turned my head—our lips met in one long passionate pressure—a kiss of fire and rapture such I had never experienced or imagined. Ed's kisses at the best left me cold as ice— Hermann's sent flame through every fibre of my being."

On April 8, 1898, Montgomery wrote that she had to stay faithful to Simpson: "for the sake of my self respect I must not stoop to any sort of an affair with another man." She then wrote:

"If I had—or rather if I could have—kept this resolve I would have saved myself incalculable suffering. For it was but a few days later that I found myself face to face with the burning consciousness that I loved Herman Leard with a wild, passionate, unreasoning love that dominated my entire being and possessed me like a flame—a love I could neither quell nor control—a love that in its intensity seemed little short of absolute madness. Madness! Yes!"

In Victorian Canada, premarital sex was rare for women, and Montgomery had been raised in a strict Presbyterian household where she was taught that people who "fornicated" would be among those who "burned in Hell forever," a message she took seriously. Despite this, she often invited Leard into her bedroom when others were away. Though she refused to have sex with him because she wanted to be a virgin bride, she and Leard kissed and engaged in "preliminary lovemaking." Montgomery called Leard in her diary only "a very nice, attractive young animal!", albeit one with "magnetic blue eyes."

After her family and friends criticized Leard for not being "good enough" for her, Montgomery ended her relationship with him. He died shortly afterward from the flu. In 1898, after much unhappiness and disappointment, Montgomery ended her engagement to Simpson. She stopped looking for romantic love. Montgomery was deeply upset when she learned of Leard's death in June 1899, writing in her diary: "It is easier to think him as dead, mine, all mine in death, as he could never be in life, mine when no other women could ever lie on his heart or kiss his lips."

In 1898, Montgomery moved back to Cavendish to live with her widowed grandmother. For nine months between 1901 and 1902, she worked as a substitute proofreader for newspapers in Halifax, including the Morning Chronicle and The Daily Echo. During this time, Montgomery was inspired to write her first books. Until her grandmother died in March 1911, Montgomery stayed in Cavendish to care for her. This period also coincided with a time when she earned a significant income from her published works.

In 1908, Montgomery published her first book, Anne of Green Gables. The book was an immediate success, launching her career. She continued to write and publish stories, including many sequels to Anne, for the rest of her life. Anne of Green Gables was published in June 1908 and had gone through six printings by November 1909. A sequel was published the following year. Canadian newspapers highlighted Montgomery's connection to Prince Edward Island, which was described as a charming part of Canada where people lived at a slower pace and held traditional values. American newspapers, however, suggested that all of Canada was backward and slow, claiming that a book like Anne of Green Gables could only be written in a rustic country like Canada, where people were not as advanced as in the United States. A typical example of American coverage was a 1911 newspaper article in Boston, which stated:

"Recently a new and exceedingly brilliant star arose on the literacy horizon in the person of a previously unknown writer of 'heart interest' stories, Miss Lucy M. Montgomery, and presently the astronomers located her in the latitude of Prince Edward Island. No one would ever imagine that such a remote and unassertive speck on the map would ever produce such a writer whose first three books should one and all be included in the 'six best sellers.' But it was on this unemotional island that Anne of Green Gables was born … This story was the work of a modest young school teacher, who was doubtless as surprised as any of her neighbors when she found her

Death

On April 24, 1942, Montgomery was found dead in her bed at her home in Toronto. The main reason for her death listed on her death certificate was coronary thrombosis. However, in September 2008, her granddaughter, Kate Macdonald Butler, shared that Montgomery struggled with depression, possibly because of caring for her mentally ill husband for many years. Her granddaughter also suggested Montgomery may have ended her own life by taking an overdose of drugs.

A note was discovered on Montgomery’s bedside table. It included these words:
"… I have lost my mind by spells and I do not dare think what I may do in those spells. May God forgive me and I hope everyone else will forgive me even if they cannot understand. My position is too awful to endure and nobody realizes it. What an end to a life in which I tried always to do my best."

An alternative explanation for this note is presented in Mary Henley Rubio’s 2008 biography Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings. The book suggests the note may have been part of a journal that is no longer available, rather than a suicide note.

Montgomery was buried at the Cavendish Community Cemetery in Cavendish after a wake at the Green Gables farmhouse and a funeral at the Cavendish United Church (formerly Cavendish Presbyterian Church).

During her lifetime, Montgomery wrote twenty novels, more than 500 short stories, an autobiography, and a collection of poetry. By 1920, she began editing and rewriting her journals to show her life the way she wanted people to remember it. In doing so, some events were changed or left out.

Legacy

Since the late 1970s and especially after the 1988 publication of Akin to Anne, many of L. M. Montgomery’s short stories have been collected into themed books. These stories, which were first published in magazines in the early 1900s and later unavailable for many years, now appear in collections such as Akin to Anne (about orphans), Among the Shadows (dark tales), At the Altar (marriage-themed stories), Along the Sea (maritime stories), and a collection of Christmas-themed pieces.

The L. M. Montgomery Institute, created in 1993 at the University of Prince Edward Island, supports research and study about Montgomery’s life, works, and influence. The institute holds items such as novels, manuscripts, letters, photographs, sound recordings, and other memorabilia related to Montgomery.

Montgomery’s most important personal items, including journals, photographs, needlework, two book manuscripts, and her personal library, are stored in the McLaughlin Library’s Archival and Special Collections at the University of Guelph.

The first biography of Montgomery was The Wheel of Things: A Biography of L. M. Montgomery (1975), written by Mollie Gillen. Gillen also discovered over 40 letters Montgomery wrote to her friend George Boyd MacMillan in Scotland, which she used in her work. Beginning in the 1980s, Montgomery’s complete journals, edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, were published by Oxford University Press. From 1988 to 1995, editor Rea Wilmshurst collected and published many of Montgomery’s short stories. Most of her essays, interviews, and commentary on her work appear in The L. M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 1: A Life in Print (2013).

Although Montgomery wrote over 20 books, she never felt she created one “great” book. However, readers have always admired her characters and stories. Mark Twain said Montgomery’s Anne was “the dearest and most moving and delightful child since the immortal Alice.” Montgomery was honored as the first Canadian woman to become a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1935.

Montgomery’s fame extended beyond Canada. Anne of Green Gables became a worldwide success. For example, thousands of Japanese visitors visit a green-gabled Victorian farmhouse in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, each year. In 2012, Anne of Green Gables ranked ninth among all-time best children’s novels in a survey by School Library Journal. In a 2003 BBC survey, The Big Read, British readers ranked Anne of Green Gables number 41 among all novels. A British scholar noted that Montgomery’s work is often overshadowed by her most famous character, Anne. License plates on Prince Edward Island say “P.E.I. Home of Anne of Green Gables” instead of “P.E.I. Birthplace of L.M. Montgomery,” which Montgomery found frustrating.

Montgomery’s home in Ontario, the Leaskdale Manse, and the Green Gables area in Prince Edward Island are both National Historic Sites. Montgomery herself was named a Person of National Historic Significance by the Canadian government in 1943.

Bala’s Museum in Bala, Ontario, opened in 1992. It is called “Bala’s Museum with Memories of Lucy Maud Montgomery” because Montgomery and her family stayed at a nearby boarding house during a 1922 holiday that inspired her novel The Blue Castle (1926). The museum hosts events related to Montgomery or her stories, including a reenactment of the 1922 visit.

Montgomery was honored by King George V as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1935. Canada did not have civilian honors until the 1970s.

Montgomery was named a National Historic Person in 1943. Her Ontario home, Leaskdale Manse, became a National Historic Site in 1997, and Green Gables was officially recognized as “L. M. Montgomery’s Cavendish National Historic Site” in 2004.

In 1975, Canada Post issued a stamp featuring Lucy Maud Montgomery and Anne Shirley. The stamp was designed by Peter Swan and printed by Ashton-Potter Limited.

In 2008, Canada Post released a pair of stamps to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Anne of Green Gables.

The City of Toronto named a park after Montgomery, Lucy Maud Montgomery Park, and placed a historical marker there near the house she lived in from 1935 until her death in 1942.

On November 30, 2015, Google honored Montgomery with a doodle in 12 countries on her 141st birthday.

The Royal Canadian Mint released a commemorative loonie in 2024 to celebrate Montgomery’s 150th birthday. The coin features artwork by Brenda Jones of Montgomery and Anne Shirley.

There have been many adaptations of Montgomery’s work. In 1985, television producer Kevin Sullivan made the popular miniseries Anne of Green Gables after getting permission from Montgomery’s family. However, legal disputes later arose over royalty payments. A settlement was reached in 2006 to resolve the disagreements.

In 2016 and 2022, Alison Louder portrayed Montgomery in episodes of the TV