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Famous Fans

Know of a celebrity who is a fan of Anne or L. M. Montgomery? Please let me know, I will feature him/her on the list.

Stephanie Meyer

Author of the best-selling series Twilight, a romance series about vampires

”The series influenced how my series turned out. Because I was never a fan of the stories where everything ends and they kiss at the wedding. Anne of Green Gable started out with her as a child, she had a very fully described adolescence, she had a book-long engagement, we got to see her wedding, we got to see her have her first child and lose her first child, we got to see her children grow up. We got the whole life, and I loved that.”

Source: “Stephanie Meyer: 12 of my Twilight inspirations”: http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20234559_20234565_20237747_1,00.html

Bliss Carman (1861-1926)

Bliss Carman is an internationally acclaimed Canadian poet. He is best known for nature poetry. Bliss Carman praised Anne of Green Gables when it was published:

“It is a real tribute to the merit and charm of this story, that while the young people of the house are making a clamouring search from cellar to attic for the missign volume, they cannot appease their desire because the master of the house has taken the book to finish the reading on the way to town”

Carman is mentioned in The Blue Castle (sometimes cited as the “original” of John Foster), and his poetry is quoted in Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat.

Sir Albert Henry George Grey “Earl Grey” (1815-1917)

Earl Grey was the Governor General of Canada from 1904-1911. He did a cross-Canada tour in 1910, and visited PEI to meet L. M. Montgomery:

July 23, 1910

[if they went to PEI, it would be] for the express purpose of offering the tribute of my homage to Miss Montgomery. I should like to thank her for Anne of Green Gables. I have not enjoyed a book more for a long time than I did hers - a Classic. I recommended al my friends in England to read it - but they nearly all were before me. They had read the book before I had!

Montgomery met Earl Grey and his party at a reception at Dr. Andrew Macphail (a widely published academic in medical sciences and a highly venerated Islander)’s home in Orwell, PEI. Montgomery’s journal account of this meeting includes the humourous incident of the Earl Grey singling her out for a walk, unknowingly choosing to sit on the steps of the MacPhail water closet to have a long conversation on her books!

Earl Grey and Montgomery corresponded for a short time after their meeting. Earl Grey both advised, complemented Montgomery, believing her work would be very influential for Canada and Prince Edward Island. He enthusiastically tried to promote her work amongst academics. [1]

[1] The Gift of Wings

Margaret Laurence

Margaret Laurence is a novelist whose works have made significant contributions to Canadian literature. She was acquainted with L. M. Montgomery through the Canadian Authors Association. Her best known books are The Stone Angel and The Diviners.

1966 CBC interview with Adrienne Clarkson

“all Canadian women’s literature started with L. M. Montgomery, who was read by all the young girls in Canada in the first half of the 20th century.”

Stanley Baldwin

Stanley Baldwin was the Prime Minister of Britain from 1923-1924, 1924-1929, 1935-1937. He was a fan of Green Gables and wished to meet Montgomery during his visit to Canada.

10 Downing Street
19th June 1927

Dear Mrs. Macdonald:
I do not know whether I shall be so fortunate during a hurried visit to Canada but it would give me keen pleasure to have an opportunity of shaking your hand and thanking you for the pleasure your books have given me. I am hoping that I shall be allowed to go to Prince Edward Island for I must see Green Gables before I return home. Not that I wouldn’t be at home at Green Gables!

I am yours sincerely,
Stanley Baldwin

Montgomery met Stanley Baldwin and the Prince Regent at a reception in Toronto.

Alice Munro

Alice Munro is a celebrated Canadian author in the short-story genre.

She wrote the afterword to Emily of New Moon for the New Canadian Library edition in 1989, discussing the book’s appeal for her. Munro had read Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon as a child, and Emily had a profound influence on her growth as a writer. She calls Emily “the watershed book of my life.”

In this book, as in all the books I’ve loved, there’s so much going on behind, or beyond, the proper story. there’s life spreading out behind the story - the book’s life - and we see it out of the corner of the eye. (Alice Munro, by Coral Ann Howells)

Bernice Thurman Hunter

Bernice Thurman Hunter is a Canadian author best known for her Booky series. Montgomery was Bernice Thurman Hunter’s favourite author, and she corresponded and spoke on the phone with Montgomery as a teenager. She received the following advice from Montgomery on July 2, 1937:

“You ask if you are too young to be writing a book with the expectation of publishing. I would say emphatically much too young. I cannot think any girl of fourteen, no matter how earnest and gifted she might be, could possibly write a book which any publisher would accept. But if you mean writing a book for your own pleasure and for training in the art of expression and creation then age has nothing to do with it. It will be good practice for you…

“Do not ever consider your writing more important than your studies. Nobody needs a good education more than a would-be writer … You have chosen a very interesting but exacting career… if you have talent and perseverence you will succeed in the end.” (The L. M. Montgomery Album by Alexandra Heilbron)

Bernice and a classmate later had tea with Montgomery. Montgomery told her “Your characters ring true.”

The famous author complimented her good imagination and true-to-life characters however, she also advised her that a writer must have a university education. Unfortunately, Bernice came from a very poor family and had no chance to go to university. (A Forest of Reading)

Bernice did not become an author until much later on in life.

Her heroine, Booky, also meets with Montgomery in the novel As Ever Booky.

Jennifer Garner

Jennifer Garner is an American actress.

Did you follow comic-books at any point in your life?

I do now. Now I can’t pass em up. I have to stop and see if there’s a new “Elektra” out or a new “Daredevil.” I am one of three girls so I followed “Anne of Green Gables,” “Emily of New Moon,” and “Little House on the Prairie.” Not comic books. But now I’m a fan and I wish I had read “Elektra” when I was growing up cause I think she’s really empowering to young women.

Source: jennifergarner.cc : articles and reviews

Mark Twain

Mark Twain is an American author best known for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Mark Twain called Anne the “most lovable childhood heroine since the immortal Alice” in a personal letter to Montgomery.

Source: Parks Canada - Green Gables Heritage Site

Adrienne Clarkson

Adrienne Clarkson is the Governor General of Canada. She delivered an opening speech for the L.M. Montgomery Institute 4th Biennial International Conference and authored the forward for L. M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture.

I must add that as a child, I really identified with that little orphan girl who was left next to the train station, who Matthew and Marilla were looking for. Now that I am older, I think I followed a different path – I wasn’t an orphan, but I could really relate to outsiders. We mustn’t forget that Anne was an outsider in the bailiwick of Prince Edward Island.

I always think that that’s interesting because when in L.M. Montgomery’s books about Anne, and of course all the others – one of my personal favourites is Tangled Web, which is not about Anne but is about Prince Edward Island society, dare I say, particularly two feuding families and a jug – but when I think about her, I think about how she was able to keep spreading her influence in that.

Source: Speech on the Ocassion of the L.M. Montgomery Institute 4th Biennial International Conference

Clarkson also said of Montgomery’s characters: “her people are Canada.” (Gift of Wings, 1966 CBC interview)

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is a celebrated Canadian author.

She has authored an Afterword to Anne of Green Gables in the 100th Anniversary edition of Anne of Green Gables published by Random House.

She has also caused much controversy with her article Margaret Atwood Salutes a Childhood Classic: Anne of Green Gables, The Guardian, Saturday March 29 2008.

In my sourer moments, I confess to having imagined yet another Anne sequel, to be called Anne Goes on the Town. This would be a grim, Zolaesque epic that would chronicle the poor girl’s enticement by means of puffed sleeves, then her sexual downfall and her subsequent brutal treatment at the hands of harsh male clients. Then would follow the pilfering of her ill-got though hard-earned gains by an evil madam, her dull despair self-medicated by alcohol and opium-smoking, and her sufferings from the ravages of an incurable STD. The final chapter would contain some Traviata-like coughing, her early and ugly death, and her burial in an unmarked grave, with nothing to mark the passing of this waif with a heart of gold but a volley of coarse jokes from her former customers. However, the presiding genius of Anne is not the gritty grey Angel of Realism, but the rainbow-coloured, dove-winged Godlet of the Heart’s Desire. As Oscar Wilde said about second marriages, Anne is the triumph of hope over experience: it tells us not the truth about life, but the truth about wish fulfilment. And the main truth about wish fulfilment is that most people vastly prefer it to the alternative.

Her novel Cat’s Eye is said to be a parody of Anne of Green Gables, featuring a malformed friendship between two characters named Cordelia and Elaine. [1]

[1] Harvesting Thistles

Abigail Breslin

Actress Abigail Breslin states “My favourite book is Anne Of Green Gables,” according to a Canwest News article.

Her trip to PEI is described at CBC, and she shares her love of Anne in a CBC Video.

Madeleine L’Engle

Madeleine L’Engle is a children’s writer, best known for her award-winning novel A Wrinkle in Time.

The books I read most as a child were by Lucy Maud Montgomery, who’s best known for her Anne of Green Gables stories, but I also liked Emily of New Moon. Emily was an only child, as I was. Emily lived on an island, as did I. Although Manhattan Island and Prince Edward Island are not very much alike, they are still islands. Emily’s father was dying of bad lungs, and so was mine. Emily had some dreadful relative, and so did I. She had a hard time in school, and she also understood that there’s more to life than just the things that can be explained by encyclopedias and facts. Facts alone are not adequate. I love Emily. I also read E. Nesbit, who was a nineteenth-century writer of fantasies and family stories, and I read fairy tales and the myths of all countries. And anything I could get my hands on.

Source: Random House and madelinelengle.com