Lucy
Maud Montgomery
(1874-1942) Canadian author of the famous ANNE OF GREEN GABLES series, who was born on
November 30, 1874 on Prince Edward Island in Clifton (now New London). Like many of her heroines, she was left motherless at the age of almost two, when her mother, Clara Woolner Macneill Montgomery, died of tuberculosis. Her merchant father, Hugh John
Montgomery, left her with her maternal grandparents, moving to the western provinces and he remarried.
Maud (as she was called) spent the next 14 years in Cavendish in an atmosphere of strict discipline.
At the age of 15, her writing was first recognized when her first poem was
published in a local paper.
At 16, she was sent to stay with her father and her stepmother in Prince Albert, Sasketchewan, but returned to her grandparents' home a year later, where she continued her education in Cavendish.
In 1895, Montgomery got a teacher's license at Prince Wales College in
Charlottetown. She studied literature at Dalhousie University in
Halifax until 1896 and taught school back on Prince Edward Island.
During this time, her grandmother became ill
and was widowed. Maud returned to Cavendish to take care of her grandmother, and worked at a local post office.
She wrote the first book of the Anne of Green Gables series while caring for
her grandmother. It was rejected by several publishers before finally
being published in 1908.
Her grandmother died passed away in
1911 and Montgomery married Ewan MacDonald, a Presbyterian
minister. They moved away to to Leaskdale, Ontario, just north of Toronto.
Here, she continued to write the Avonlea series with
and also published a book of poetry in 1916. She also had three
children, losing one at birth.
She also wrote other series with heroines
with different personalities than Anne Shirley. In 1926, she published
her first novel for adults, The Blue Castle.
Over a long career in writing, Montgomery was made Fellow of the British Royal Society of Arts in 1923,
a Companion of the Order of the British Empire, and a member of the Literary and Artistic Institute of France, in 1935.
Beginning in the 1980s, Montgomery's complete journals, edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, were published by the Oxford University Press. From 1988-95, editor Rea Wilmshurst collected and published numerous
previously unknown short stories by Montgomery.
Lucy Maud Montgomery died April 24, 1942, and was buried in Cavendish cemetery. Her husband died a year later.
They were survived by their two sons, Chester and Stuart.
