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The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. 1: 1889-1910

About the Book

First published in 1985.

L. M. Montgomery kept prolific journals all her life, chronicling her everyday routines and personal trials, thoughtful comments on current issues in politics, science and literature, and colourful anecdotes of friends and relations, and perceptive or prejudiced criticisms. Like Emily of New Moon who said “I am going to write a diary that may be published after I die,” Montgomery intended her journals for publication. She rewrote and illustrated her diaries as a celebrated authoress, and edited the journals into an abridged, typewritten manuscript towards the end of her life. The ten volumes of handwritten journals and the typewritten variation, which are now stored in the University of Guelph Archives became five books, edited by professors Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, and published between 1985-2004.

The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery

L. M. Montgomery’s journals illuminate an aspect of the popular children’s author seldom known to the public: renowned for stories of “sweetness and light”, Montgomery’s diaries reveal instead troubling childhood anxieties, and unhappy psychological and nervous frustrations. The first volume of her journals was an immediate bestseller upon publication.[1]

The first volume follows L. M. Montgomery’s from age fourteen to the year before her marriage. Recorded in it are her Cavendish school experiences and teenage romances, the year she spent “out west” in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan with her father and stepmother, attending college in Charlottetown and Halifax, her schoolteacher days in rural PEI, her tumultous love affair with Herman Leard, the loneliness of caring for her aging Grandmother in Cavendish, and the writing and publication of Anne of Green Gables.

The journal can be previewed online at Amazon.com

“New Volume of Montgomery Journals Chronicle Tough Years.” http://www.uoguelph.ca/mediarel/archives/001425.html

Editorial Reviews

“The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery…have given me enormous pleasure.” Carol Shields, The Boston Globe

“These journals are an important contribution, not just to literary and social history but to the body of Canadian literature.” - Books in Canada

“Montgomery comes to life in a way that is only possible in the pages of a journal.” - Toronto Star

“These are journals so enlightening, so full of wisdom, humor, philosophy and tragedy that they are worth a winter’s reading and reflection.” - Ottawa Citizen

“We owe Professors Rubio and Waterston a very large debt of gratitude for their patient work on these volumes; they are a record of life-writing unique in our literature and outstanding in any company.” - Clara Thomas, Literary Review of Canada

“Montgomery’s journals provide not only poignant and entertaining reading, but a fine source of social, medical and literary history as well.” - Atlantic Books Today “As a document and tribute to the sensibility of a fine Canadian writer, it is invaluable.” - Calgary Herald

“For anyone under the mistaken impression that Montgomery’s novels represent the pinnacle of her literary output, her journals are a must-read.” - Canadian Book Review Annual