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Category: Biography

Three New Books This Month and Three More Coming Soon

Three exciting new L.M. Montgomery-related books have been published throughout the month of May, with three more appearing shortly. Together, these six books showcase the wide reach of Montgomery’s literary and cultural legacy more than seventy-five years after her death.
Cover art for L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature(s)L.M. Montgomery's Complete Journals: The Ontario Years, 1922-1925

Cover art for House of Dreams: The Life of L.M. Montgomery, by Liz RosenbergCover art for The Diary of Charles Macneill, Farmer, 1892–1896Cover art for The Blythes Are Quoted: Penguin Modern Classics Edition
Coming up in June is Liz Rosenberg’s middle-grade biography, House of Dreams: The L.M. Montgomery (Candlewick Press), as well as The Diary of Charles Macneill, Farmer, 1892–1896 (Rock’s Mills Press), the full text of a diary by a distant relative of L.M. Montgomery that she transcribed in full and commented on extensively in her own journal in 1925, with a preface by Jen Rubio. Finally, in early July, Penguin Canada will publish a new Penguin Modern Classics Edition of Montgomery’s rediscovered final book, The Blythes Are Quoted, with a revised introduction by Benjamin Lefebvre and a revised afterword by Elizabeth Rollins Epperly.

Cover Art for House of Dreams: The Life of L.M. Montgomery

Given that today is the anniversary of L.M. Montgomery’s birth in 1874, it seems fitting to post that Candlewick Press has released on its website a tentative cover for its upcoming middle-grade biography, Liz Rosenberg’s House of Dreams: The Life of L.M. Montgomery, illustrated by Julie Morstad and scheduled for publication in June 2018.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Maud who adored stories. When she was fourteen years old, Maud wrote in her journal, “I love books. I hope when I grow up to be able to have lots of them.” Not only did Maud grow up to own lots of books, she wrote twenty-four of them herself as L. M. Montgomery, the world-renowned author of Anne of Green Gables. For many years, not a great deal was known about Maud’s personal life. Her childhood was spent with strict, undemonstrative grandparents, and her reflections on writing, her lifelong struggles with anxiety and depression, her “year of mad passion,” and her difficult married life remained locked away, buried deep within her unpublished personal journals. Through this revealing and deeply moving biography, kindred spirits of all ages who, like Maud, never gave up “the substance of things hoped for” will be captivated anew by the words of this remarkable woman.

An affecting biography of the author of Anne of Green Gables is the first for young readers to include revelations about her last days and to encompass the complexity of a brilliant and sometimes troubled life.

Cover art for House of Dreams: The Life of L.M. Montgomery, by Liz Rosenberg

Cover Art for Urquhart Biography of Montgomery

Cover art for Jane Urquhart's biography /L.M. Montgomery/, published as part of the Extraordinary Canadians series by Penguin Canada.
Cover art for Jane Urquhart’s biography /L.M. Montgomery/, published as part of the Extraordinary Canadians series by Penguin Canada.

Jane Urquhart’s forthcoming biography of L.M. Montgomery, part of the Extraordinary Canadians series by Penguin Canada, is now available for pre-order at Amazon.ca and at Chapters.Indigo.ca. It is scheduled for publication on 22 September 2009.

Early Release for The Gift of Wings

Mary Henley Rubio’s long-anticipated biography Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings has been released ahead of schedule by Doubleday Canada!

This comprehensive and penetrating account of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s life, all set in rich social context, and featuring previously unseen photographs, is sure to take its place as the definitive biography of this literary icon.

The book can be ordered online at a discount through Amazon.ca or Chapters.Indigo.ca or at your local bookstore.

The Gift of Wings Available for Pre-Order

Pre-order listings have appeared on Amazon.ca and Chapters.Indigo.ca for Mary Henley Rubio’s forthcoming biography, The Gift of Wings: The Life of Lucy Maud Montgomery, to be published in October by Doubleday Canada (whose own listing for the book can be found here). More information about this book will be posted here once it becomes available.

L.M. Montgomery Biography by Jane Urquhart

Penguin Canada is launching a new series called Extraordinary Canadians, “a rediscovery of the great figures of Canada’s past by its most brilliant contemporary writers,” with John Ralston Saul as General Editor. Eighteen volumes are planned for publication between 2008 and 2010, along a companion TV documentary series and a website that is not yet online. The first three books in the series—Emily Carr by Lewis DeSoto, Lord Beaverbrook by David Adams Richards, and Nellie McClung by Charlotte Gray—will be published in March 2008.

In September 2009, they will publish L.M. Montgomery by Jane Urquhart. We will post further updates about this book once it becomes available.