L. M. Montgomery: Her Life

L.M. Montgomery (Lucy Maud Montgomery) was born in Clifton (now New London), Prince Edward Island, on November 30, 1874, to Hugh John Montgomery and Clara Woolner Macneill. When Montgomery was 21 months old, her mother died of tuberculosis. Her father left her in the care of her mother's parents, Alexander and Lucy Woolner Macneill of Cavendish, and moved to western Canada, where he eventually settled in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and remarried.

As an only child living with an elderly couple, Montgomery found companionship in her imagination, nature, books, and writing. When she was nine, she began writing poetry and keeping a journal. She also spent time with her Uncle John and Aunt Annie Campbell (her mother's sister), and their family in Park Corner. There she spent many happy days, playing with her cousins and visiting her paternal grandfather, Senator Donald Montgomery, who lived close to the Campbells.  She loved her Cavendish home and Silver Bush (as the Campbell farm was called) in Park Corner.

Dr. Kate Scarth, Chair of L.M. Montgomery Studies and Associate Professor of Applied Communication, Leadership, and Culture at UPEI, answers the question "Who is L.M. Montgomery?"

LM at age 9
Archival & Special Collections, University of Guelph, L.M. Montgomery Collection

At the age of six, she began attending the one-room school near her grandparents' home in Cavendish. She completed her early education there, with the exception of one year (1890-1891) which she spent in Prince Albert with her father and his wife, Mary Anne McRae. While in Prince Albert, she achieved her first publication - a poem entitled "On Cape LeForce" published by a Prince Edward Island  newspaper, The Patriot. In September of 1891, she returned to Cavendish, too late to go to school that year, but she completed grade ten in 1892-1893. The following year (1893-1894), she studied for a teacher's license at Prince of Wales College, completing the two-year course in one year and graduating with honours.

During her brief teaching career, Montgomery taught at three Island schools: Bideford, Belmont, and Lower Bedeque respectively. She left teaching for one year (1895-1896) to study selected courses in English literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, becoming one of the few women of her time to seek higher education. It was during her stay at Dalhousie that she received the first payments for her writing.

In 1898, while Montgomery was teaching in Lower Bedeque, her Grandfather Macneill died suddenly. She returned to Cavendish immediately to take care of her grandmother who otherwise would have had to leave her home. She remained with her grandmother for the next thirteen years, with the exception of a nine-month period in 1901-1902 when she worked as a proof-reader for The Daily Echo in Halifax.

During her years in Cavendish, Montgomery continued to write and sent off numerous poems, stories, and serials to Canadian, British, and American magazines. Despite many  rejections, she eventually commanded a comfortable income from her writing. In 1899, she earned $96.88 - not much by today's standards but a nice sum at the turn of the century. Her earnings from her writing increased to $500 in 1903.

In 1905, she wrote her first and most famous novel, Anne of Green Gables. She sent the manuscript to several publishers, but, after receiving rejections from all of them, she put it away in a hat box. In 1907, she found the manuscript again, re-read it, and decided to try again to have it published. Anne of Green Gables was accepted by the Page Company of Boston, Massachusetts and published in 1908. An immediate best-seller, the book marked the beginning of Montgomery's successful career as a novelist.

After Grandmother Macneill died in March of 1911, Montgomery married the Reverend Ewan Macdonald, to whom she had been secretly engaged since 1906, on July 5, 1911. Prior to her engagement to Macdonald, she had had two romantic involvements: an unhappy engagement to her third cousin Edwin Simpson, of Belmont, and a brief, but passionate romantic attachment to Herman Leard, of Lower Bedeque.

sage green book cover of anne of green gables
Rev. Ewan Macdonald
Archival & Special Collections, University of Guelph, L.M. Montgomery Collection

After their marriage, Montgomery and Macdonald moved to Leaskdale, Ontario, where Macdonald was minister in the Presbyterian church. She had three sons: Chester (1912), Hugh (stillborn in 1914), and Stuart (1915); assisted her husband in his pastoral duties; ran their home; and continued to write best-selling novels as well as short stories and poems. She faithfully recorded entries in her journals and kept up an enormous correspondence with friends, family, and fans. Maud Montgomery Macdonald did not live on Prince Edward Island again, returning only for vacations.

Montgomery was a very sensitive and intelligent woman who suffered deeply from events that affected her personally and the world. In her journals, she expressed her pain at the death of her infant son Hugh, the horrors of the First World War, the death of her beloved cousin Frede Campbell, and the discovery that her husband suffered from religious melancholia. But despite these and other problems, she continued to write, expressing her love of life, nature, and beauty in her fiction, journals, and letters.

In 1926, the Montgomery Macdonalds moved to Norval, Ontario, where they stayed until Macdonald resigned from the ministry in 1935. They then moved to Toronto, where they could be close to their sons. Maud Montgomery Macdonald died in Toronto, Ontario, on April 24, 1942; Ewan Macdonald died in November 1943. In death, Montgomery returned to her beloved Prince Edward Island, where she was buried in the Cavendish cemetery, close to the site of her old home.

Montgomery immortalized this tiny province through her wonderful descriptions of life, nature, community, and people on Prince Edward Island. All but one of her 20 books are set on Prince Edward Island. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people, directly or indirectly influenced by the way of life she depicted in her writing, come to Prince Edward Island to see the place she loved so much.

Parks Canada
Parks Canada

L. M. Montgomery: Timeline

1874
1876
1883
1890-91
1893-94
1894-95
1895-96
1896-97
1897-98
1901-02
1902
1903
1906
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
1913
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919
1920
1922
1923
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1939
1942

1874

Born November 30, in Clifton, Prince Edward Island

1876

Montgomery’s mother, Clara Macneill Montgomery dies of tuberculosis

1883

Wreck of the ship the Marco Polo in Cavendish, Montgomery would eventually write about this.

1890-91

Trip to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan to stay with her father and new wife, attends High School

1893-94

Attends Prince of Wales College and earns First Class Teacher's licence

 

1894-95

Teaches school in Bideford, PEI

 

1895-96

Attends Dalhousie University in Halifax

1896-97

Teaches in Belmont, PEI and becomes engaged to Edwin Simpson, a cousin

 

1897-98

Teaches in Lower Bedeque, PEI; falls in love with Herman Leard; breaks engagement to Simpson; Returns to Cavendish to live with Grandmother Macneill when Grandfather dies

1901-02

Works as newspaperwoman on the Daily Echo in Halifax

1902

Begins a lifelong correspondence with Ephraim Weber; becomes close friends with cousin Frede Campbell and with Cavendish teacher Nora Lefurgey

1903

Ewan Macdonald becomes Presbyterian minister in Cavendish; begins life-long correspondence with George Boyd MacMillan

1906

Secretly engaged to Ewan Macdonald, who leaves to study in Scotland.

1908

Publication of the best selling Anne of Green Gables

1909

Anne of Avonlea

1910

Kilmeny of the Orchard; Macdonald accepts parish in Leaskdale, Ontario; Montgomery meets Earl and Lady Grey in September; in November travels to Boston to meet her publisher, L.C. Page

1911

The Story Girl; Grandmother Macneill dies; marries Ewan Macdonald at Park Corner on 5 July; honeymoons in Scotland and England for three months; home to Leaskdale, Ontario

1912

Chronicles of Avonlea; Chester Cameron born July 7th

1913

The Golden Road; trip to PEI

1914

First World War is declared; Hugh Alexander dies at birth on August 13th

1915

Anne of the Island; Ewan Stuart born October 7th

1916

The Watchman and Other Poems

1917

Anne's House of Dreams; polls her first vote

1918

First World War ends; Montgomery goes to PEI to help nurse the sick at Park Corner

1919

 Frede Campbell Macfarlane dies of Spanish flu in Montreal; Ewan suffers a nervous breakdown; Rainbow Valley; Montgomery sells rights for Anne of Green Gables to Page who sells movie rights immediately

1920

Further Chronicles of Avonlea published illegally; Montgomery begins eight-year lawsuit with Page Co.; Rilla of Ingleside

1922

Car accident in Zephyr where Ewan is sued and refuses to pay; trip to Muskoka

1923

Emily of New Moon; Montgomery first Canadian woman to become Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in Britain

1925

Emily Climbs; Church Union vote in Canada

1926

The Blue Castle; moves to Norval, Ontario

1927

Emily's Quest; presented to the Prince of Wales

1928

Nora Lefurgey Campbell reappears in Montgomery life and lives in a Toronto flat

1929

Magic for Marigold; stock market crash affects Montgomery finances

1930

Goes to Prince Albert to rekindle 1890's friendships

1931

A Tangled Web

1933

Pat of Silver Bush

1934

 Chester and Luella's baby Luella is born; Courageous Women

1935

Mistress Pat; Montgomery elected to Literary and Artistic Institute of France; moves to 210 Riverside Drive, Toronto ("Journey's End"); Officer of the Order of the British Empire

1936

Anne of Windy Poplars; Cavendish chosen as site for National Park on Prince Edward Island

1937

Green Gables site opens in Cavendish; Jane of Lantern Hill

1939

Anne of Ingleside; last visit to PEI

1942

Dies on 24 April; lies in state at Green Gables and is buried in Cavendish Cemetery (where Ewan Macdonald joins her one year later)