In April, we remember Lucy Maud Montgomery, who passed away on April 24, 1942. Through Anne and her many beloved characters, Lucy gave us tales of hope, imagination, and, as Anne would say, “bosom friends.”
Lucy Maud Montgomery was born on November 30, 1874, in Clifton, Prince Edward Island (now known as New London), to Hugh John Montgomery and Clara Woolner Macneill. At 21 months old, Montgomery lost her mother to tuberculosis. Her father soon relocated to western Canada, eventually settling in Prince Albert, where he remarried, leaving young Maud in the care of her maternal grandparents, Alexander and Lucy Woolner Macneill, in Cavendish.
As an only child raised by elderly grandparents, Montgomery found companionship in books, writing, nature, and her vivid imagination.
At six, Montgomery began attending the one-room schoolhouse in Cavendish. Her education was mostly completed there, except for one year (1890–1891) spent in Prince Albert with her father and stepmother, Mary Anne McRae. During that time, she had her first piece published, a poem titled On Cape LeForce, printed in The Patriot, a Prince Edward Island newspaper. She returned to Cavendish in September 1891 and completed Grade 10 by 1893. The following year, she attended Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, completing the two-year teacher’s program in just one year and graduating with honours in 1894.
Montgomery went on to teach at three rural schools in Prince Edward Island: Bideford, Belmont, and Lower Bedeque. She briefly left teaching in 1895–1896 to study English literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, an uncommon pursuit for women at the time. While at Dalhousie, she received her first payments for her writing.
After her grandfather’s death, in 1898, she returned to Cavendish to care for her grandmother, with whom she lived for the next thirteen years, except for a brief period (1901–1902) when she worked as a proofreader for The Daily Echo in Halifax.
Throughout these years, Montgomery wrote prolifically, submitting poetry, short stories, and serialized fiction to publications in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. and in 1899, she earned $96.88 from her writing, a respectable sum for the time, and by 1903, her annual earnings had grown to $500.
In 1905, Montgomery wrote Anne of Green Gables, her first and most famous novel. After multiple rejections, she stored the manuscript in a hatbox. Two years later, she rediscovered it, revised it, and resubmitted it. This time, it was accepted by the Page Company of Boston and published in 1908. The novel was an instant bestseller and launched Montgomery’s career as a novelist.
Following the death of her grandmother in March 1911, Montgomery married Reverend Ewan Macdonald on July 5, 1911. The two had been secretly engaged since 1906 and moved to Leaskdale, Ontario, where Ewan served as a Presbyterian minister. There, Montgomery raised their three sons, Chester (born 1912), Hugh (stillborn in 1914), and Stuart (born 1915), supported her husband’s ministry, ran their household, and continued her writing–whew!
In 1926, the family moved to Norval, Ontario, where they remained until Ewan Macdonald retired from the ministry in 1935. They then settled in Toronto to be closer to their sons.
L.M. Montgomery died in Toronto on April 24, 1942. Her husband passed away the following year in November 1943. Lucy was laid to rest in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, near her childhood home.
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