In 1912, an entry on L.M. Montgomery appeared in Henry James Morgan’s major reference work The Canadian Men and Women of the Time.
Contents
Preamble
“McDonald, Mrs. Lucy Maud”
Notes
Bibliography
Image Credit
Preamble
In 1912, William Briggs published a second edition of Henry James Morgan’s reference work The Canadian Men and Women of the Time: A Hand-Book of Canadian Biography of Living Characters. The first edition, published in 1898, “included, approximately, 2,891 sketches of living characters,” according to Morgan’s preface, but this second edition now counted “some 7,900 sketches” of living persons (vii), including “McDonald, Mrs. Lucy Maud”—otherwise known as L.M. Montgomery.
The inclusion of Montgomery in such a reference work goes to show that Montgomery was considered to be a key figure in Canadian literature just four years after the publication of Anne of Green Gables. This entry may well be the source for Montgomery’s erroneous birthdate of 1877.
“McDonald, Mrs. Lucy Maud”
“McDonald, Mrs. Lucy Maud,” in The Canadian Men and Women of the Time: A Hand-Book of Canadian Biography of Living Characters, edited by Henry James Morgan, 2nd ed. (William Briggs, 1912), 760. https://archive.org/details/canadianmenwomen0000unse_w1b1/page/760/.
McDonald, Mrs. Lucy Maud, author.
D. late Hugh John and Clara Woolner (Macneill) Montgomery; is a niece of the late Senator Montgomery, P.E.I.; b. Clifton, P.E.I., 1877; e. Prince of Wales Coll., Charlottetown, P.E.I., and Dalhousie Univ.; m., July, 1911, Rev. Ewen McDonald (Presb.), Leaskdale, Ont.; for a short period a sch. teacher; author, among other productions, of several novels, including “Anne of Green Gables” (1908); “Anne of Avonlea” (1909); “Kilmeny of the Orchard” (1910), and “The Story Girl” (1911); is a regular contributor to the Eng., Am. and Can. mags. (See an appreciation by Marjory MacMurchy, q.v., “Prince Edward Island’s Novelist,” Can. Courier, June, 1910); elected V.-P. for Maritime Prov., Can. Women’s Press Club; Presb.—Leaskdale, Ont.; Can. Women’s Press Club.
“Possesses a richly-endowed mind of rare imaginative capacity.” —Dr. John Reade (q.v.).
“Possessed of very remarkable skill, sympathy and understanding.” —S.N.
“‘Anne of Green Gables’ is the sweetest creation of child life yet written.” —Late Mark Twain.
“Henceforth Anne (one of Miss Montgomery’s characters) must always remain one of the immortal children of fiction.” —Bliss Carman (q.v.).
“The list of ‘Fifty Best Works in Fiction’ for 1909, recently selected by a referendum of Librarians in the State of New York, is headed by Miss Montgomery’s delightful ‘Anne of Avonlea.’” —Globe. (760)
Notes
D. late Hugh John and Clara Woolner (Macneill) Montgomery. Montgomery dedicated Anne of Green Gables “to the memory of my father and mother”: Hugh John Montgomery (1841–1900) and Clara (née Macneill) Montgomery (1853–1876).
b. Clifton, P.E.I., 1877. Montgomery’s birth year appeared sometimes three years too late, including in Marjory MacMurchy’s 1914 profile of Montgomery, which appeared in several versions and under several titles in Canadian newspapers. The version entitled “L.M. Montgomery of the Island,” first published in the Manitoba Free Press, appears in volume 1 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader.
a niece of the late Senator Montgomery, P.E.I. Montgomery was in fact a granddaughter of Senator Donald Montgomery, who represented PEI in Ottawa from 1874 until his death in 1893 (Rubio and Waterston, introduction to SJLMM, 1: xiii). Montgomery mentioned this grandfather in her 1891 travel essay “From Prince Albert to P.E. Island” and in her 1917 celebrity memoir, “The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career,” both included in A Name for Herself: Selected Writings, 1891–1917 (see NH, 24, 238).
Rev. Ewen McDonald. As I’ve noted before, Montgomery’s married surname was Macdonald, but several misspellings appeared in the press.
an appreciation by Marjory MacMurchy. This article appeared in the 18 June 1910 issue of The Canadian Courier.
q.v. Initialism for “quod vide,” post-classical Latin for “which see” (Oxford English Dictionary, “q.v., interjection”).
“Possesses a richly-endowed mind of rare imaginative capacity.” Although this phrase is attributed here to Dr. John Reade, it appears in an unsigned review of Anne of Green Gables published in the Montreal Gazette and reprinted in volume 3 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader (see “Anne of Green Gables,” 55). In his preface to this volume, Morgan acknowledges help from “John Reade, LL.D., F.R.S.C., Assistant Editor Montreal Gazette, Montreal” (ix).
“Possessed of very remarkable skill, sympathy and understanding.” This quotation can be traced to a “Books and Authors” article published in the 22 January 1910 issue of Saturday Night (“S.N.”) that reads as follows: “In the east Miss L.M. Montgomery, of Prince Edward Island, has won the praise of about the whole literary world with ‘Anne of Green Gables,’ and although her later story, ‘Anne of Avonlea,’ is not, as was remarked on this page recently, a work of any distinction, this author has shown herself to be possessed of very remarkable skill, sympathy, and understanding” (Saturday Night, “Books and Authors,” 15). This periodical’s review of Anne of Avonlea, appearing in its 1 January 1910 issue, had called it “commonplace, if pretty” (“Anne of Avonlea,” 82).
“‘Anne of Green Gables’ is the sweetest creation of child life yet written.” This is a frequent misquotation of an extract from a note that J.V. Lyon, secretary to Mark Twain, had sent Montgomery in October 1908 in which he’d quoted from a letter Twain had sent to Francis Wilson: “In ‘Anne of Green Gables’ you will find the dearest + most moving + delightful child since the immortal Alice.” Montgomery’s first publisher, L.C. Page and Company, used this as a celebrity endorsement to publicize the book, and in 1939, Montgomery saved the letter in what ended up being her final journal volume. See Montgomery, 8 May 1939, in SJLMM, 5: 331, and SJLMM, 5: 332.
“Henceforth Anne . . . one of the immortal children of fiction.” This endorsement by Bliss Carman circulated in several notices after the publication of Anne of Green Gables, including one that appears in volume 1 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader as “[Such a Delightful Little Person].”
“The list of ‘Fifty Best Works in Fiction’ for 1909 . . . ‘Anne of Avonlea.’” This quotation is from an unsigned article entitled “Under the Lamp” that appeared in the Globe (Toronto) on 1 October 1910. It refers to Anne of Avonlea as “the sequel to ‘Anne of Green Gables,’ the book which so successfully launched Miss Montgomery on her literary career.” The article then reports on Montgomery’s recent sales success: “Messrs. Page now report the twenty-fifth printing of ‘Anne of Green Gables’ and fifteenth printing of ‘Anne of Avonlea.’ Miss Montgomery’s new and charming romance, ‘Kilmeny of the Orchard,’ published in April last, is now in its sixth large edition.”
Bibliography
“Anne of Avonlea.” In Lefebvre, The L.M. Montgomery Reader, 3: 69–83. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442660861-006.
“Anne of Green Gables.” In Lefebvre, The L.M. Montgomery Reader, 3: 51–68. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442660861-005.
Globe (Toronto). “Under the Lamp.” 1 October 1910, 16. https://www.newspapers.com/image/1226628650/.
Lefebvre, Benjamin, ed. The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 1: A Life in Print. University of Toronto Press, 2013.
MacMurchy, Marjory. “L.M. Montgomery of the Island.” In Lefebvre, The L.M. Montgomery Reader, 1: 129–33.
Montgomery, L.M. Anne of Avonlea. L.C. Page and Company, 1909.
—. Anne of Green Gables. L.C. Page and Company, 1908.
—. Kilmeny of the Orchard. L.C. Page and Company, 1910.
—. A Name for Herself: Selected Writings, 1891–1917. Edited by Benjamin Lefebvre. University of Toronto Press, 2018. The L.M. Montgomery Library.
—. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 5: 1935–1942. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Oxford University Press, 2004.
—. The Story Girl. L.C. Page and Company, 1911.
Morgan, Henry J. Bibliotheca Canadensis; or, A Manual of Canadian Literature. G.E. Desbarats, 1867. https://archive.org/details/cu31924032392486/.
—. Sketches of Celebrated Canadians, and Persons Connected with Canada, from the Earliest Period in the History of the Province Down to the Present Time. R. Worthington, 1865. https://archive.org/details/sketchesofcelebr00morg/.
Morgan, Henry James, ed. The Canadian Men and Women of the Time: A Hand-Book of Canadian Biography. William Briggs, 1898. https://archive.org/details/trent_0116404245940_1/.
Saturday Night (Toronto). “Books and Authors.” 22 January 1910, 15. https://archive.org/details/sim_saturday-night_1910-01-22_23_15/page/14/.
“[Such a Delightful Little Person].” In Lefebvre, The L.M. Montgomery Reader, 31–32.
Image Credit
Detail from the title page of the second edition of The Canadian Men and Women of the Time: A Hand-Book of Canadian Biography of Living Characters, edited by Henry James Morgan and published by William Briggs in 1912. Courtesy of the Internet Archive.
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