The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 3: 1921–1929, edited and introduced by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, offers a selection of Montgomery’s journals written from the ages of forty-six to fifty-four. It was preceded by Volume 1: 1889–1910 (1985) and Volume 2: 1910–1921 (1987) and followed by Volume 4: 1929–1935 (1998) and Volume 5: 1935–1942 (2004). It was published as a jacketed hardcover by Oxford University Press in October 1992, with a trade paperback appearing in April 2003. Parts of the text of this volume were revisited in L.M. Montgomery’s Complete Journals: The Ontario Years, 1918–1921 (2017) and L.M. Montgomery’s Complete Journals: The Ontario Years, 1926–1929 (2017), both edited by Jen Rubio.
- The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 3: 1921–1929 at Oxford University Press
From the Dust Jacket
This eagerly anticipated third volume of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s journals covers the period 1921 to 1929. In the 1920s, Montgomery is in mature mid-life, and her personal and professional lives are becoming even more complex. Montgomery juggles the demands of motherhood, parish obligations, indifferent household help, grief at the loss of older friends and family, appeals by her PEI clan for advice and assistance—everyday struggles to balance a woman’s social and domestic duties. There are also triumphs and trials more closely related to her position as a best-selling author: growing fame; the successful midwifery of her new heroines “Emily” and “Marigold” and a more adult novel, The Blue Castle; the struggle to allocate time for correspondence with publishers, fans, pen-friends—and actually to write. We trace the happy conclusion of her lawsuits against an unscrupulous publisher, and the disappointing outcome of the tempest-in-a-teapot suit arising from a minor automobile accident. There are more personal worries: the Rev. Ewan Macdonald’s envy of his wife’s publishing and social success; the dark shadow cast by his recurrent attacks of religious melancholia; her concern lest their sons evince similar tendencies.
In mid-decade, Ewan Macdonald accepts a call to Norval, Ontario and Montgomery leaves “dear Leaskdale” with mixed feelings.
In these years—so unlike the decade described as the “Jazz Age”—LMM turns more and more to her journal to record insights and opinions not voiceable by “the angel in the house,” as well as the brief epiphanies of delight in nature’s beauty that have always sustained her. Her journal is an important example of life-writing—writing in the autobiographical mode—by a complex, sensitive, successful, and surprisingly contemporary writer.
Contents
Illustrations (vi–vii)
Acknowledgements (viii–ix)
Introduction / Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston (x–xxv)
1921 (1–34)
1922 (35–107)
1923 (108–54)
1924 (155–214)
1925 (215–67)
1926 (268–318)
1927 (319–62)
1928 (363–88)
1929 (389–401)
Notes (402–32)
List of deletions (433–34)
List of Montgomery’s errors in dating entries (434)
Index (435–43)
Reviews
Reviews by Nora Abercrombie, Mark Abley, Lisa Arsenault, Michael Bliss, Laurel Boone, J.M. Bumsted, Rod Currie, Ann Flowers, Lalage Grauer, Kathe Gray and Owen Roberts, Alison Gzowski, Linda Kupecek, Lucie Milne, Enid Delgatty Rutland, Klaus Peter Stich, Genevieve Wiggins, and Gerri Young, as well as in Atlantic Books Today.
Metadata
Editors: Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston
Paratexts: Introduction and Notes by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston
Publisher: Oxford University Press (Toronto)
Date: 1992
Format: Jacketed hardcover
Trim: 6” x 9”
Pagination: xxv + 443 pp.
ISBN: 0-19-540936-1