The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 4: 1929–1935, edited and introduced by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, offers a selection of Montgomery’s journals written from the ages of fifty-four to sixty. It was preceded by Volume 1: 1889–1910 (1985), Volume 2: 1910–1921 (1987), and Volume 3: 1921–1929 (1998), and followed by Volume 5: 1935–1942 (2004). It was published as a jacketed hardcover by Oxford University Press in October 1998, with a trade paperback appearing in April 2005. Part of the text of this volume was revisited in L.M. Montgomery’s Complete Journals: The Ontario Years, 1926–1929 (2017), edited by Jen Rubio.
- The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 4: 1929–1935 at Oxford University Press
From the Dust Jacket
The fourth volume of the immensely successful Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery covers the years from 1929 to 1935, a tumultuous period in the writer’s life. By 1929 she was 54 years old and known world-wide as the author of Anne of Green Gables and many other books, yet this was also a time of numerous setbacks: the stock market crash, a drop in royalties from her many books, the need to provide her two sons with a university education while her husband’s modest church salary was often in arrears, and the fact that many loans she made to friends and family were not repaid.
She faced personal crises in relations with her sons and her husband and there was furious controversy in her husband’s parish, Norval Presbyterian Church. She also felt concerns over her own mental state and she became the unwilling object of a young woman’s declaration of passionate love. Yet this was not a period without joy: the volume opens with happy travels to Prince Edward Island and western Canada and ends with her looking forward with great excitement to a new life in Toronto.
Besides providing an intimate look into the daily life of one of the world’s best-loved authors, these journals can also be read as a fascinating social history of the early twentieth century. For example, Montgomery’s health concerns provide intriguing insights into the state of medical practices. Readers may shudder slightly when a bout of asthma is treated with strychnine tablets or a ‘bad chill’ brings out a compound of arsenic.
For all those who love the works of L.M. Montgomery, as well as those interested in women’s lives and in recent Canadian history, volume four of Montgomery’s journals will provide a fascinating and moving record.
Contents
Illustrations (vi–vii)
Acknowledgements (viii–x)
Introduction / Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston (xi–xxviii)
A Note on the Text (xxix–xxxi)
1929 (1–27)
1930 (28–98)
1931 (99–159)
1932 (160–212)
1933 (213–49)
1934 (250–332)
1935 (333–73)
Notes (374–412)
List of deletions (413)
Mistakes in Montgomery’s date-headings (414)
Appendix A (415–20)
Appendix B: The Montgomerys of Prince Edward Island (420–22)
Appendix C: The Haunted Spring (423)
Appendix D (424–26)
Chronology (427–30)
Index (431–39)
Reviews
Reviews by Cecily Devereux, Maggie Macdonald, Elisabeth-Anne MacDonald-Murray, Janet McNaughton, Nancy A. Schiefer, Carol Shields, Clara Thomas, and Lorraine York.
Metadata
Editors: Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston
Paratexts: Introduction and Notes by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston
Publisher: Oxford University Press (Toronto)
Date: 1998
Format: Jacketed hardcover
Trim: 6” x 9”
Pagination: xxxi + 439 pp.
ISBN: 0-19-541381-4