The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 1: 1889–1910, edited and introduced by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, offers a selection of Montgomery’s journals dated 1889 to 1910, when Montgomery was fourteen to thirty-five years old. It was followed by Volume 2: 1910–1921 (1987), Volume 3: 1921–1929 (1992), Volume 4: 1929–1935 (1998), and Volume 5: 1935–1942 (2004). This initial volume was published as a jacketed hardcover by Oxford University Press in November 1985, with a trade paperback appearing in January 2000.
As a result of the continued interest in Montgomery’s journals, an unabridged edition of the journals appearing in this volume, still edited by Rubio and Waterston, appeared as The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery: The PEI Years, 1889–1900 (2012) and The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery: The PEI Years, 1901–1911 (2013).
- The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 1: 1889–1910 at Oxford University Press
From the Dust Jacket
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942)—whose Anne of Green Gables and many other novels are loved by readers around the world—kept extensive journals for most of her life, beginning them in 1889 when she was fourteen and continuing them until shortly before her death. Spontaneous and frank, they are unusual for their narrative interest: Montgomery’s gifts as a storyteller are as much in evidence here as in her novels.
This first volume takes her to 1910, the year before her marriage, when she left Prince Edward Island. It recounts her schooldays in Cavendish, redolent with incidents, impressions, and romantic “crushes” that found their way into her fiction; a year spent in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, with her father and stepmother; a year of study at Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, where she trained to be a teacher, and another at Dalhousie University; her teaching years; a powerful infatuation with the son of a family she lived with; a long and mostly unhappy period of keeping house for her grandmother; and the publication of Anne of Green Gables. The autobiographical content will fascinate every devoted reader of the Anne books. But the Montgomery journals are especially interesting because they provide a unique social history and the privilege of viewing closely the life of a remarkable woman. Comprising perhaps the most vivid and detailed memoir in Canadian letters, the journals will join Anne of Green Gables in ensuring Montgomery’s lasting place in Canadian literature. This volume is a rich and engrossing prelude to the whole.
Contents
Illustrations (x–ix)
Acknowledgements (xi–xii)
Introduction / Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston (xiii–xxiv)
1889 (1–12)
1890 (13–43)
1891 (44–74)
1892 (75–87)
1893 (88–101)
1894 (102–32)
1895 (133–53)
1896 (154–74)
1897 (175–200)
1898 (201–34)
1899 (235–46)
1900 (247–56)
1901 (257–77)
1902 (278–85)
1903 (286–91)
1904 (292–99)
1905 (300–16)
1906 (317–27)
1907 (328–33)
1908 (334–45)
1909 (346–67)
1910 (368–94)
Notes (395–415)
Omissions (416)
Index (417–24)
Reviews
Reviews by J.M. Bumsted, Margaret Conrad, Ann S. Cowan, Elizabeth R. Epperly, Judith Finlayson, Robert Fulford, Carol Goodwin, G.P. Greenwood, Heather Henderson, Clifford G. Holland, Coral Ann Howells, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Mary Lu MacDonald, Lucie A. Milne, Darlene Money, Patricia Morley, Sherie Posesorski, Marilyn Powell, Janet Saunders, Nancy A. Schiefer, Mary Ainslie Smith, David Staines, Hilary Thompson, and Henry Wiebe.
Metadata
Editors: Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston
Paratexts: Introduction and Notes by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date: 1985
Format: Jacketed hardcover
Trim: 6” x 9”
Pagination: xxiv + 424 pp.
ISBN: 0-19-540503-X