The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery was a five-volume edition that reproduced a selection of L.M. Montgomery’s journal entries dated 1889 to 1942. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, who also provided an introduction and notes to each volume, these five volumes were published by Oxford University Press between 1985 and 2004.
This project was subsequently revisited in two sets of unabridged journals: The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery (2012–2013), also edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, and L.M. Montgomery’s Complete Journals (2016–), under the editorship of Jen Rubio.
In chronological order: Volume 1: 1889–1910 (1985) | Volume 2: 1910–1921 (1987) | Volume 3: 1921–1929 (1992) | Volume 4: 1929–1935 (1998) | Volume 5: 1935–1942 (2004)
Volume 1: 1889–1910 (1985)
The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 1: 1889–1910, includes a selection of Montgomery’s journal entries dated 21 September 1889 to 7 February 1910, when Montgomery was between the ages of fourteen and thirty-five. It was published as a jacketed hardcover by Oxford University Press in November 1985, with a trade paperback appearing in January 2000.
The editors dedicated this volume “to the memory of Dr. E. Stuart Macdonald and to Ruth Macdonald.”
Citation: Montgomery, L.M. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 1: 1889–1910. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Format Details: Jacketed hardcover, 6” × 9”, xxiv + 424 pp., ISBN 0-19-540503-X
Publisher’s Listing: https://www.oupcanada.com/catalog/9780195415124.html
Synopsis
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
Globe and Mail (Toronto), 2 November 1985, D21 (Marilyn Powell, “The Ideals of a Lonely Little Girl”).
Maclean’s (Toronto), 11 November 1985, 73 (Heather Henderson, “Innocence and Wisdom”).
Record (Kitchener-Waterloo), 22 November 1985, D1–D2 (Carol Goodwin, “Lucy’s Story”).
Guelph Mercury, 29 November 1985, 17 (Janice Wiseman, “Journal Shows Two Sides of the Woman Who Created ‘Anne’”).
Quill and Quire (Toronto), December 1985, 22 (Sherie Posesorski, “Shedding Light on the Creator of a Children’s Classic”).
London (ON) Free Press, 13 December 1985, A15 (Nancy A. Schiefer, “A Writer Even More Enchanting Than Her Heroines”).
Toronto Star, 14 December 1985, M5 (Robert Fulford, “Sad Soul Vainly Seeking Tenderness”).
Globe and Mail (Toronto), 19 December 1985, D9 (Judith Finlayson, “The Gift of the Love of a Child”).
Whig-Standard (Kingston, ON), 28 December 1985, M18 (Patricia E. Malcolmson, “Roughing It . . . in Green Gables”).
Canadian Book Review Annual 1985, edited by Dean Tudor and Ann Tudor (Toronto: Simon and Pierre, 1986), 70 (Darlene Money).
The Reader 5, no. 2 (1986): 15–16. (Ann S. Cowan)
Gazette (Montreal), 11 January 1986, C2 (David Staines).
Calgary Herald, 26 January 1986, F6 (G.P. Greenwood “Truth behind Green Gables”).
Toronto Sun, 26 January 1986 (Yvonne Crittenden, “Journals Reveal a Lot of Anne in Her Creator”).
The Atlantic Provinces Book Review 13, no. 1 (February–March 1986): 1 (J.M. Bumsted, “Who’s Afraid of Lucy Maud Montgomery?”).
Spectator (Hamilton), 15 February 1986, E2 (John Levesque, “Imagination at Work: Origins of Anne Are Visible in Author’s Fascinating Journals”).
Winnipeg Free Press, 22 February 1986, 72 (Janet Saunders, “Green Gables Creator Tells All to Her Diary”).
Books in Canada (Toronto), March 1986, 17–19 (Mary Ainslie Smith, “Coming of Age in Cavendish”).
The Island Magazine 19 (Spring–Summer 1986): 38–39 (Elizabeth R. Epperly). https://islandarchives.ca/islandora/object/vre:islemag-batch2-254.
The Presbyterian Record (Toronto), April 1986, 28–29 (Lucie A. Milne).
Ottawa Citizen, 12 April 1986, C5 (Patricia Morley, “Journals Shine with Anne of Green Gables Spirit”).
Times Colonist (Victoria, BC), 27 April 1986, M5 (Rod Currie, “Anne of Green Gables Author Bares Soul”). Alberni Valley (BC) Times, 27 March 1986, Spectrum section, 8 (“Sunny Anne of Green Gables Written”). Red Deer Advocate, 29 March 1986, 1B (“Lucy Maud Montgomery: Her Tragic, Lonely Life”). Vancouver Sun, 29 March 1986, D12 (“Journals Show Author Lived Lonely, Tragic Life”).
The Literary Review (London), June 1986, 14–15 (Penelope Lively, “The Red-Haired Waif”).
Archivaria 22 (Summer 1986): 184–85 (Mary Lu MacDonald). https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/11316.
The Canadian Historical Review 67, no. 3 (September 1986): 437–38 (Margaret Conrad).
Queen’s Quarterly 93, no. 3 (Autumn 1986): 667–68 (Clifford G. Holland).
Canadian Literature 111 (Winter 1986): 205–6 (Hilary Thompson, “Role-Maker”).
Canadian Children’s Literature / Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse 45 (1987): 79–81 (Coral Ann Howells, “LMM: Finding a Voice”). https://ccl-lcj.ca/index.php/ccl-lcj/article/view/4452.
The Antigonish Review 73 (Spring 1988): 83–88 (Janice Kulyk Keefer).
Record (Kitchener-Waterloo), 26 March 1988, D6 (Henry Wiebe).
Choice 26, no. 1 (September 1988) (M.L. Solt). https://doi.org/10.5860/CHOICE.26-0150.
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Volume 2: 1910–1921 (1987)
The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 2: 1910–1921, includes a selection of Montgomery’s journal entries dated 11 February 1910 to 13 March 1921, when Montgomery was between the ages of thirty-five and forty-six. It was published as a jacketed hardcover by Oxford University Press in October 1987, with a trade paperback appearing in April 2003.
Citation: Montgomery, L.M. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 2: 1910–1921. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Format Details: Jacketed hardcover, 6” × 9”, xx + 443 pp., ISBN 0-19-540586-2
Synopsis
Since the publication—to great critical acclaim—of Volume I of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s journals, this second volume covering the period 1910 to 1921 has been eagerly awaited. Volume II records a time of great change and upheaval both in Montgomery’s life and in society. When she wrote the first entry in this volume she had recently become a world-famous author, having published Anne of Green Gables in 1908. Here we become privy to her response to the death of her grandmother, who had restricted her life severely; her marriage and honeymoon trip to Scotland and England; and her departure from Prince Edward Island to the new restrictions of her life as the wife of a Presbyterian minister in an Ontario village. Montgomery reveals the intensities of friendship, the minutiae of home-making, the joys of motherhood along with the traumas of a disturbed marriage, and records the sources and composition of the “Anne” series and the emergence of her new heroine “Emily.” Besides learning about the rewards and trials—including two unpleasant lawsuits—of being a successful author, we see also how a sensitive woman responded to the possibility, the actuality, and the aftermath of a world war.
By turns tart and sentimental, sharp-sighted and anxiety-ridden, L.M. Montgomery provides a compelling record of her remarkable life against the background—both social and literary—of a tumultuous period in Canadian history. The entries in this volume more than fulfil the promise of Volume I.
Contents
Illustrations (vi–vii)
Acknowledgements (viii)
Introduction / Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston (ix–xx)
1910 (1–35)
1911 (36–51)
1912 (52–116)
1913 (117–40)
1914 (141–58)
1915 (159–74)
1916 (175–200)
1917 (201–37)
1918 (238–79)
1919 (280–362)
1920 (363–94)
1921 (395–405)
Notes (406–34)
Omissions (435)
A Note on Dates (435)
Index (436–43)
Reviews
Toronto Star, 6 December 1987, C8 (Ken Adachi, “Anne’s Author Faced Darkness”).
London (ON) Free Press, 19 December 1987, B7 (Nancy A. Schiefer, “Montgomery Journals Provided an Escape”).
Guelph Mercury, 22 December 1987, 15 (Margaret Boyd, “Author of ‘Anne’ Novels Gives Insight to Her Duty-Bound Life”).
Ottawa Citizen, 26 December 1987, C2 (Patricia Morley, “Pain behind Green Gables”).
Canadian Book Review Annual 1987, edited by Dean Tudor (Toronto: Simon and Pierre, 1988), 64 (V. Gillham).
Books in Canada (Toronto), January–February 1988, 34 (Laurel Boone, “The Gift of Wings”).
Globe and Mail (Toronto), 9 January 1988, C15 (Marilyn Powell, “Unhappy Times”).
Whig-Standard (Kington, ON), 9 January 1988, P20 (Patricia E. Malcolmson, “The Diaries of Lucy Maud”).
Spectator (Hamilton), 23 January 1988, D4 (Jane Coutts, “Montgomery Fled Deprived Life in Diary’s Pages”).
Globe and Mail (Toronto), 27 January 1988, A7 (Margaret J. Ritchie, “Anne’s Creator Still Stimulates”).
Guardian (Charlottetown), 27 January 1988 (Frances Carruthers, “Islander’s Diaries Compiled in Edition”).
Winnipeg Free Press, 30 January 1988, 54 (Joan Thomas, “A Dark Side to Green Gables”).
The Atlantic Provinces Book Review 15, no. 1 (February–March 1988): 10 (J.M. Bumsted, “Maud Montgomery’s Finest Character Creation”).
The Presbyterian Record (Toronto), February 1988, 34–36 (Lucie A. Milne).
Gazette (Montreal), 13 February 1988, J9 (Eileen Manion, “The Two Faces of ‘Anne’”).
The Antigonish Review 73 (Spring 1988): 83–88 (Janice Kulyk Keefer).
The Island Magazine 23 (Spring–Summer 1988): 38–39 (Elizabeth R. Epperly). https://islandarchives.ca/islandora/object/vre:islemag-batch2-308.
Record (Kitchener-Waterloo), 2 April 1988, D4 (Henry Wiebe, “Happiness Is More Evident in L.M. Montgomery’s Later Journals”).
Toronto Sun, 3 April 1988 (Yvonne Crittenden, “Mercurial Montgomery’s Bittersweet Chronicles”).
Choice 26, no. 1 (September 1988) (M.L. Solt). https://doi.org/10.5860/CHOICE.26-0150.
CM: A Reviewing Journal of Canadian Materials for Young People (Ottawa), September 1988, 178 (Marilyn Aldworth). https://www.cmreviews.ca/cm/cmarchive/vol16no5/selectedjournalsof.html.
Canadian Children’s Literature / Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse 55 (1989): 71–73 (Lorraine M. York, “Darkness and Ecstasy”). https://ccl-lcj.ca/index.php/ccl-lcj/article/view/4699.
Resources for Feminist Research / Documentation sur la recherche féministe 18, no. 2 (June 1989): 60–61 (Heather Avery).
Canadian Literature 122–23 (Autumn–Winter 1989): 163–64 (Laurel Boone. “Montgomery”).
English 39, no. 163 (Spring 1990): 83–87 (Coral Ann Howells, “Pluralisms”).
Globe and Mail (Toronto), 26 April 2003, D41 (Alison Gzowski).
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Volume 3: 1921–1929 (1992)
The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 3: 1921–1929, includes a selection of Montgomery’s journal entries dated 8 April 1921 to 6 August 1929, when Montgomery was between the ages of forty-six and fifty-four. It was published as a jacketed hardcover by Oxford University Press in October 1992, with a trade paperback appearing in April 2003.
Citation: Montgomery, L.M. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 3: 1921–1929. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Format Details: Jacketed hardcover, 6” x 9”, xxv + 443 pp., ISBN 0-19-540936-1
Publisher’s Listing: https://www.oupcanada.com/catalog/9780195418026.html
Synopsis
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
University of Guelph Research 7, no. 1 (1992): 11 (Kathe Gray and Owen Roberts, “They Love Lucy”).
Atlantic Books Today (Halifax), Fall 1992, 27 (“Behind the Gables”).
Gazette (Montreal), 31 October 1992, J1 (Mark Abley, “Author’s Life Was Far Cry from Sunny Green Gables”).
Record (Kitchener-Waterloo), 2 November 1992, D1 (Margaret Mironowicz, “Fighting Spirit Kept Author at Work: Third Volume of Montgomery Journals Reveals Struggle Between Duty, Ambition”).
Books in Canada (Toronto), December 1992, 49 (Laurel Boone, “Success in Private”).
Whig-Standard (Kingston, ON), 26 December 1992, M1 (Maureen Garvie, “Above Reproach”).
Canadian Book Review Annual 1992, edited by Joyce M. Wilson (Toronto: CBRA, 1993), 71–72 (Lisa Arsenault).
Ottawa Citizen, 16 January 1993, B7 (Enid Delgatty Rutland, “Enlightening Journals”).
The Presbyterian Record (Toronto), February 1993, 36 (Lucie Milne).
CM: A Reviewing Journal of Canadian Materials (Ottawa), March 1993, 67 (Gerri Young).
United Church Observer, March 1993, 51 (John McTavish).
Province Showcase (Vancouver), 28 March 1993, B25 (Rod Currie, “Montgomery Led Sort of a Double Life”). Chronicle-Herald (Halifax), 30 April 1993, B3 (“Splitting a Personality”).
Literary Review of Canada (Toronto), June 1993, 7–9 (Clara Thomas, “The Multiple Lives of L.M. Montgomery”). All My Sisters: Essays on the Work of Canadian Women Writers, by Clara Thomas (Ottawa: The Tecumseh Press, 1994), 201–23.
Edmonton Journal, 27 June 1993, E6 (Nora Abercrombie, “Dear Diary . . . Writing to the Ultimate ‘Kindred Spirit’”).
The Canadian Architect 38, no. 9 (September 1993): 217–20.
The Horn Book Magazine (Boston), September–October 1993, 631–32 (Ann Flowers).
The Island Magazine 34 (Fall–Winter 1993): 37–40 (J.M. Bumsted). https://islandarchives.ca/islandora/object/vre:islemag-batch2-458.
University of Toronto Quarterly 63, no. 1 (Fall 1993): 217–20 (Lalage Grauer).
American Review of Canadian Studies 23, no. 4 (Winter 1993): 629–31 (Genevieve Wiggins). https://doi.org/10.1080/02722019309481848.
Canadian Children’s Literature / Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse 72 (Winter 1993): 85–86 (Michael Bliss, “The Travails of the Creative Spirit”). https://ccl-lcj.ca/index.php/ccl-lcj/article/view/2933.
Calgary Herald, 29 January 1994, A14 (Linda Kupecek, “Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Journals Reveal Painful Struggle”).
Canadian Literature 144 (Spring 1995): 195–97 (Klaus Peter Stich, “Published Private Lives”).
Boston Globe, 21 May 1995, 80 (Carol Shields).
Globe and Mail (Toronto), 26 April 2003, D41 (Alison Gzowski).
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Volume 4: 1929–1935 (1998)
The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 4: 1929–1935, includes a selection of Montgomery’s journal entries dated 11 August 1929 to 24 April 1935, when Montgomery was between the ages of fifty-four and sixty. It was published as a jacketed hardcover by Oxford University Press in October 1998, with a trade paperback appearing in April 2005.
Citation: Montgomery, L.M. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 4: 1929–1935. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Format Details: Jacketed hardcover, 6” x 9”, xxxi + 439 pp., ISBN 0-19-541381-4
Publisher’s Listing: https://www.oupcanada.com/catalog/9780195423044.html
Synopsis
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
Quill and Quire (Toronto), October 1998, 31 (Janet McNaughton). https://quillandquire.com/review/the-selected-journals-of-lm-montgomery-vol-iv-1920-1935/.
Globe and Mail (Toronto), 3 October 1998, D18 (Carol Shields. “Loving Lucy”). The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album, compiled by Kevin McCabe, edited by Alexandra Heilbron (Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1999), 407–8 (untitled).
Books in Canada (Toronto), November–December 1998, 11–12 (Clara Thomas, “A Self-Portrait of Anne’s Author”).
London (ON) Free Press, 7 November 1998, C15 (Nancy A. Schiefer, “Montgomery’s Volume IV a Delight”).
Lethbridge (AB) Herald, 26 December 1998, F6 (Maggie Macdonald, “Journals Capture Essence of Author”).
Canadian Book Review Annual 1998, edited by Joyce M. Wilson (Toronto: CBRA, 1999), 75–76 (Elisabeth Anne MacDonald-Murray).
Canadian Children’s Literature / Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse 99 (Fall 2000): 87–89 (Lorraine York, “Dark Days”). https://ccl-lcj.ca/index.php/ccl-lcj/article/view/3714.
Canadian Literature 177 (Summer 2003): 180–81 (Cecily Devereux, “The Continuing Story”).
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Volume 5: 1935–1942 (2004)
The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 5: 1935–1942, includes a selection of Montgomery’s journal entries dated 24 April 1935 to 23 March 1942, when Montgomery was between the ages of and sixty and sixty-seven. It was published as a jacketed hardcover by Oxford University Press in September 2004, with a trade paperback appearing in September 2005.
The editors dedicated this volume “to our husbands: Douglas Longworth Waterston and the late Gerald John Rubio.”
Citation: Montgomery, L.M. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 5: 1935–1942. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Format Details: Jacketed hardcover, 6” x 9”, xxix + 410 pp., ISBN 0-19-542116-7
Publisher’s Listing: https://www.oupcanada.com/catalog/9780195422153.html
Synopsis
The final volume of the immensely successful Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery covers the years from 1935 to 1942, the year of Montgomery’s death. It completes the story of a gifted creative writer who was also wife, mother, community leader, and public figure.
No longer dwelling in a farm community or a small rural village, Lucy Maud Montgomery explored life in downtown Toronto and turned her journals into the unprecedented diary of a suburban housewife. Here she experienced the cultural riches the city had to offer while finding friendship and neighbourliness in the suburb of Swansea, where she and her husband settled when he retired. The journal chronicles her hopes and satisfaction with her new home and neighbourhood, but also her struggles with her own and her husband’s recurring bouts of depression. It also reflects a growing friction between generations as tensions between herself and her sons, Chester and Stuart, began to dominate her later years. Family life could boil up in disturbing ways, resulting in gaps and evasions in the journals.
In spite of all her private anxieties, however, she continued to record public events. The years 1935 to 1942 were troubled indeed. The Great Depression deepened; the abdication of King Edward VIII shook both the security of the monarchy and social assumptions about marriage and divorce; Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, the Sino-Japanese War and the apparent inability of the League of Nations to deter Hitler all intensified political uncertainty as the world moved inexorably toward the breakout of a second world war.
This final volume in the series offers an intimate eye-witness account of life in a growing city, a friendly neighbourhood, a changing world, and a troubling family, all recorded with Lucy Maud Montgomery’s sharp eye and characteristic wit. Like the earlier journals, this volume offers the counterpoint of dark realism and tragic irony, as well as insight and humour. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery are intelligently polished works, gems in the genre of life-writing.
Contents
Illustrations (iv–v)
Acknowledgements (vi–viii)
Introduction / Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston (ix–xxix)
1935 (1–53)
1936 (54–119)
1937 (120–225)
1938 (226–99)
1939 (300–47)
1940 (348)
1941 (349)
1942 (350)
Notes (351–99)
List of Deletions (400)
Mistakes in Montgomery’s Date-Headings (401)
Index (403–10)
Reviews
Globe and Mail (Toronto), 16 October 2004, D6–D7 (Margaret Anne Doody, “Lucy Maud Arrives in Hell”).
London (ON) Free Press, 30 October 2004, D8 (Nancy Schiefer, “A Last Cry of Despair”).
Books in Canada (Toronto), December 2004, 18 (Clara Thomas, “Completing the Journals of L.M. Montgomery”).
Books in Canada (Toronto), December 2004, 30 (Greg Gatenby, “From the Crow’s Nest”).
Canadian Book Review Annual 2004, edited by Joyce M. Wilson (Toronto: CBRA, 2005), 79 (Virginia Gillham).
The Presbyterian Record (Toronto), February 2005, 43 (John McTavish).
University of Toronto Quarterly 75, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 325–27 (Irene Gammel). https://doi.org/10.1353/utq.2006.0078.
The Canadian Historical Review 87, no. 1 (March 2006): 143–44 (Heather Murray). https://doi.org/10.1353/can.2006.0028.
Canadian Literature 189 (Summer 2006): 145–46 (Laura M. Robinson, “Tragedy of Everyday Life”).
Canadian Children’s Literature / Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse 34, no. 2 (Fall 2008): 112–23 (E. Holly Pike, “Who Do We Think You Are?”). https://ccl-lcj.ca/index.php/ccl-lcj/article/view/4925.
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Published on 27 February 2024; last updated on 1 March 2024. Please contact the site owner with additions, corrections, questions, and suggestions.