MRS. Lucy Maud Montgomery Macdonald was born at Clifton, Prince Edward Island, whence, in her early infancy, the family moved to Cavendish. After attending the district school there until she was sixteen years of age, she spent a year each at Prince of Wales College, Charlottetown, and Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1911 she married and moved to Leaksdale, Ontario, her present home.

She inherited with her Scotch blood a strain of poetry, and has written nature verse, particularly of the sea, characterized by play of fancy rather than by descriptive vividness. There is a deeper poetry of life in her prose than in her verse. In her short stories and in her novels, especially in her treatment of child life, by throwing “a certain coloring of imagination” over the humor and pathos of the incidents of common life as lived in a picturesque rural environment, she achieves a rare combination of truth and beauty that may best be described as poetic realism.

Her most important short stories have been published in two volumes. These are the cameo work or the miniature painting in her house of life. In them she shows a fine sense for the story values in single tragic or comic incidents or episodes in common life, and for idyllic settings and artistic skill in giving her material fictional form.

Her novels come under the classification “community novel.” She is distinctive among the authors of this type of Canadian fiction in that she usually links her novels in series by continuing the story of important characters. Kilmeny of the Orchard, an idylic love story, is complete in itself, but The Story Girl and The Golden Road, are linked, the series connected by the character Anne contains six books, and there are two Emily books. Each series pictures realistically the life of young people, and yet there is freshness and originality of treatment in every volume.

The Anne series is a comedie humaine unparalleled in Canadian fiction. The first book of the series, Anne of Green Gables, is widely known as a fascinating story of the childhood and young girlhood of a remarkably sensitive and highly original character. In it, as the title indicates, the central interest is the influence of Anne upon the home into which she is adopted. Anne of Avonlea shows her sphere of influence widened to include the whole community in a special way, for she is now the teacher of the public school. Anne of the Island shows the heroine reflecting glory on her native province by her distinctive work in college. The last three of the Anne books give
us glimpses of Anne’s life as a woman. In Anne’s House of Dreams she is the young wife of her former schoolmate, now Dr. Gilbert Blythe. In Rainbow Valley the interest shifts to Anne’s children. She has six of them, and they make things as interesting as we should expect the children of such a mother to do. Moreover, they are ably supported by the four children of the manse. In Rilla of Ingleside, Anne’s daughter Rilla is the central figure. The mother’s personality, nevertheless, exerts an important influence throughout the series. To write such a series is a work of eminent literary distinction.

The Emily series shows an improvement on the Anne series in some respects. Anne’s characteristics were not accounted for. Emily’s are. She inherits from her father the Starr emotional temperament and sense of beauty; from her mother the Murray strength of will and gift of second sight. In Emily of New Moon, the dramatic moments in Emily’s life are the logical result of her inherited tendencies and the environment in which she is placed. Characterization and plot are an organic unity. The interest aroused in Emily’s literary ambitions is continued in Emily Climbs, to the end of her high-school period. Rejection slips make her realize the necessity of continuous practice in writing. A necessary promise to write no fiction for three years corrects her highly imaginative style by confining her to the writing of prose facts, and near the end of the book she is well on the way to literary fame. The characters, both juvenile and adult, are as vividly drawn in this as in the preceding volume, and fit as logically into the situations which constitute the plot.

Skill in logical characterization, as revealed in the Emily books, was a necessary prerequisite for successful fiction dealing primarily with adult characters. This our author first attempted in The Blue Castle, the story of a repressed, inhibited, introverted woman who, on being told by mistake at the age of twenty-nine that she will die of heart disease within a year, becomes emancipated and extroverted to the extent of marrying a Muskoka mystery man, author of nature books and son of a patent-remedy millionaire. Though the romantic plot makes the novel less poetically realistic than its predecessors, the characterization fulfills the promise of the Emily books, and the idyllic handling of the setting does justice to the Muskoka country and to the author.

Check-List of First Editions

Anne of Green Gables. Boston, 1908.
Anne of Avonlea. Boston, 1909.
Kilmeny of the Orchard. Boston, 1910.
The Story Girl. Boston, 1911.
Chronicles of Avonlea. Boston, 1912.
The Golden Road. Boston, 1913.
Anne of the Island. Boston, 1915.
The Watchman and Other Poems. Toronto, 1916, New York, 1917.
Anne’s House of Dreams. Toronto, 1917.
Rainbow Valley. New York, 1919.
Further Chronicles of Avonlea. Boston, 1920.
Rilla of Ingleside. London, New York, and Toronto, 1921.
Emily of New Moon. London, New York and Toronto, 1923.
Emily C7imbs. London, New fork, and Toronto, 1925.
The Blue Castle. London, New York and Toronto, 1926.
Emily’s Quest. London, New York and Toronto. 1927.

Editor’s Note.—Since the receipt of this article from Prof. Bhodenizer there has appeared the new Emily book, Emily’s Quest, which has been added to the foregoing check-list, and which will be reviewed in the next issue of Canadian Bookman. It takes up the thread of Emily’s story where Emily Climbs ended, and tells the love story that
started there.

The attention of readers is directed also to the further reference to Mrs. Montgomery as appearing on page 251 of this issue.

Prof. Bhodenizer, who wrote this article, is familiar to our readers by reason of previous contributions. He is a member of the faculty of Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

Complementing the article about L. M. Montgomery in this issue, it is interesting to record on the basis of a message from Cavendish, P.E.I., that she was obliged to shorten her annual vacation at her old home by the sea in the Island Province, in order to bring about the realization of the wish expressed by Premier Baldwin, of England, to meet the author of books “which have given me so much pleasure.’’ He had expressed a desire to see the “green gables country,’’ but regretted that his Canadian itinerary prevented his doing so. The sequel came when Mrs. Macdonald (L. M. Montgomery), was a guest awaiting entrance to the garden party given by the Lieut.-Gov. of Ontario to the Royal visitors and their party, a messenger came to her from Premier Baldwin informing her that he was looking for her arrival and would see her at once. Waiving ceremony, there followed a memorable half hour’s chat with Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin, in itself a significant tribute at any time but the more notable under the exacting circumstances, and one to stir the pride of the least self-conscious.