Many of our friends and renowned Montgomery scholars have posted excellent online biographies of Montgomery - we direct you to these essays for accurate information about L.M. Montgomery
and so that these authors get credit for the content:
Dr. Mary Henley Rubio| Dr. Elizabeth R. Epperly
Montgomery's autobiography The Alpine Path
Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston's short biography,
Writing A Life
Ewen With an E:
L.M. Montgomery's homelife has been defined by her journal narratives,
wherein her husband, Reverend Ewen Macdonald, identified as “Ewan,”
is portrayed many times as an ill-matched partner.
A paper highlighting some of the underlying idiosyncrasies and stresses
within the Macdonald home which contribute to this characterization,
as well as the parental pressures which overshadowed those stresses,
will be published in The Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies in the future.
Was Ewen as bad as some people claim?
In the meantime, read an early and shorter version in The Shining Scroll 2023.
Timeline of Montgomery Life Events
About Prince Edward Island, see more on our Literary Tour page
Readers come to this site for information about the death of Montgomery:
and so that these authors get credit for the content:
Dr. Mary Henley Rubio| Dr. Elizabeth R. Epperly
Montgomery's autobiography The Alpine Path
Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston's short biography,
Writing A Life
Ewen With an E:
L.M. Montgomery's homelife has been defined by her journal narratives,
wherein her husband, Reverend Ewen Macdonald, identified as “Ewan,”
is portrayed many times as an ill-matched partner.
A paper highlighting some of the underlying idiosyncrasies and stresses
within the Macdonald home which contribute to this characterization,
as well as the parental pressures which overshadowed those stresses,
will be published in The Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies in the future.
Was Ewen as bad as some people claim?
In the meantime, read an early and shorter version in The Shining Scroll 2023.
Timeline of Montgomery Life Events
About Prince Edward Island, see more on our Literary Tour page
Readers come to this site for information about the death of Montgomery:
A Selected Overview of Montgomery Biography: What to Read
Mary Beth Cavert (c) 2008, 2024
* Recommendations *
Overview - The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album
Biographies - The Gift of Wings, The Wheel of Things,
The Selected and Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery, more Complete Journals,
The Shining Scroll
About Her Novels Magic Island, The Fragrance of Sweet-Grass
Other - Montgomery's letters (see bibliography below), and The L.M. Montgomery Reader
and Book-Length Biographies at LMM Online.
Overview - The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album
Biographies - The Gift of Wings, The Wheel of Things,
The Selected and Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery, more Complete Journals,
The Shining Scroll
About Her Novels Magic Island, The Fragrance of Sweet-Grass
Other - Montgomery's letters (see bibliography below), and The L.M. Montgomery Reader
and Book-Length Biographies at LMM Online.
The "evolution" of the L.M. Montgomery biography begins with her own autobiography, or more correctly called, "The Story of My Career," printed in Everywoman's World (June - November), in 1917. Later published as The Alpine Path, it concluded when Montgomery returned to Canada from her honeymoon (1911).
Hilda Ridley drew extensively from the six installments of "The Story of My Career" for the basis of her biography published in 1956, The Story of L.M. Montgomery. She read the magazine series in the scrapbooks of Ella (Mrs. George) Campbell and her son, James, of Park Corner, PEI. She collected pieces of information about LMM from the Campbells, Montgomery's son, Chester, Maud's friend Fannie Wise Mutch, a family nurse, neighbors and friends in Ontario.
In 1960, letters of Montgomery were published, providing the first look into the author's life up to 1909, through her correspondence with Ephraim Weber.
Dr. Elizabeth Waterston chose to write a chapter about Montgomery's life and career for The Clear Spirit: Twenty Canadian Women and Their Times in 1966. This book was published for the Centennial of the Canadian Federation and the chapter authors were instructed to use original research to write about a person who had a "significance in the development of Canadian society." Waterston read the Weber letters and his essays about Montgomery for the Dalhousie Review, as well as Ridley's book. She also interviewed Montgomery's son, Dr. Stuart Macdonald, who told her about his mother's journals which he intended to edit when he retired.
The centennial of Montgomery's birth was in 1974, and Doris Anderson, editor of Chatelaine Magazine, asked associate editor, Mollie Gillen, to write an article about Montgomery in 1973. Gillen used the Weber letters and interviews with Montgomery's cousins to write Maud Montgomery: The Girl Who Wrote Green Gables.
The centennial brought a new source to light in Dr. Francis Bolger's, The Years Before “Anne," published in 1974. Dr. Bolger is an honored Island historian and teacher -- he had acquired early Montgomery letters written when she was 15 years old and living in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He wrote a short biography using these early letters to Penzie MacNeill, Murray Macneill, and Ephraim Weber, and her personal scrapbooks, as well as other archival records for resources. He also cited Gillen's article and Waterston's chapter.
Mollie Gillen had acquired so much extra material for her Chatelaine article that she expanded her research into a book, eventually tracking down the letters Montgomery wrote to George Boyd MacMillan in Scotland before they were destroyed by MacMillan's nephew. The Wheel of Things: A Biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery was published by Fitzhenry and Whiteside in 1975 and was the first book length biography to use all the original unpublished Montgomery letters, as well as interviews with relatives, to pull back the curtain a little farther on the private life of the author. Fitzhenry and Whiteside also published The Alpine Path in book form for the first time in 1975.
Gillen had other writing commitments and could not return to Montgomery work after 1975. Dr. Bolger and Dr. Elizabeth Epperly then edited portions of the MacMillan letters -- My Dear Mr. M.: Letters to G.B. MacMillan from L.M. Montgomery, Author of Anne of Green Gables was published in 1980.
When scholar Mary Rubio was mulling over dissertation topics, she was influenced by Gillen's biography and Waterston's mention of Montgomery's journals to consider Montgomery. However, Dr. Stuart Macdonald was not ready to allow access to the journals. Nonetheless, Rubio and Dr. Macdonald became friends and eventually, near the end of his life, the papers were sold to the University of Guelph archives for Rubio to edit and develop. The five volumes of The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery (and Complete Journals of the PEI Years, vol. 1,2) were published from 1985 to 2013. Jen Rubio has continued her mother's work by publishing complete editions of the rest of the journals except for the last two volumes which were only lightly edited in the Selected Journal editions. Rubio and Waterston used these as the basis for a short biography of Montgomery in 1995 called Writing a Life.
A good overview, up to the 1990s, of Montgomery and her works, is L.M. Montgomery, written by Genevieve Wiggins in 1992. The release of Montgomery's diaries provided ample material for many more small "biographies" summarized primarily from the journals. More Montgomery new material was made public in 2006 when the rest of the Weber letters were published, After Green Gables: L.M. Montgomery’s Letters to Ephraim Weber, 1916-1941.
Biographical material was published through other venues as well. In 2000, the L.M. Montgomery Institute released a multi-media collection of Montgomery information on its CD-ROM, The Bend in the Road. The founder of the Institute, Dr. Elizabeth Epperly, curated an online exhibition of Montgomery's life in 2002: Picturing a Canadian Life: L.M. Montgomery's Personal Scrapbooks and Book Covers. In 2008, The L.M. Montgomery Collection with Montgomery photographs from the University of Guelph archives was made available online. In 2023 new online material has been published at The Original Manuscript of Anne of Green Gables.
In the fall of 2008, during the Anne of Green Gables centennial year, Dr. Mary Rubio's extensive biography, The Gift of Wings, was published. Rubio spent 25 years interviewing people and ingesting every piece of available Montgomery information and scholarship -- readers can see the scope of it in her acknowledgments and select bibliography.
In November of 2008, biographer Mollie Gillen celebrated her 100th birthday (she received cards from Queen Elizabeth and the mayor of Toronto) with relatives, her publisher, and friends sending best wishes from the Montgomery fans around the world.
Hilda Ridley drew extensively from the six installments of "The Story of My Career" for the basis of her biography published in 1956, The Story of L.M. Montgomery. She read the magazine series in the scrapbooks of Ella (Mrs. George) Campbell and her son, James, of Park Corner, PEI. She collected pieces of information about LMM from the Campbells, Montgomery's son, Chester, Maud's friend Fannie Wise Mutch, a family nurse, neighbors and friends in Ontario.
In 1960, letters of Montgomery were published, providing the first look into the author's life up to 1909, through her correspondence with Ephraim Weber.
Dr. Elizabeth Waterston chose to write a chapter about Montgomery's life and career for The Clear Spirit: Twenty Canadian Women and Their Times in 1966. This book was published for the Centennial of the Canadian Federation and the chapter authors were instructed to use original research to write about a person who had a "significance in the development of Canadian society." Waterston read the Weber letters and his essays about Montgomery for the Dalhousie Review, as well as Ridley's book. She also interviewed Montgomery's son, Dr. Stuart Macdonald, who told her about his mother's journals which he intended to edit when he retired.
The centennial of Montgomery's birth was in 1974, and Doris Anderson, editor of Chatelaine Magazine, asked associate editor, Mollie Gillen, to write an article about Montgomery in 1973. Gillen used the Weber letters and interviews with Montgomery's cousins to write Maud Montgomery: The Girl Who Wrote Green Gables.
The centennial brought a new source to light in Dr. Francis Bolger's, The Years Before “Anne," published in 1974. Dr. Bolger is an honored Island historian and teacher -- he had acquired early Montgomery letters written when she was 15 years old and living in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He wrote a short biography using these early letters to Penzie MacNeill, Murray Macneill, and Ephraim Weber, and her personal scrapbooks, as well as other archival records for resources. He also cited Gillen's article and Waterston's chapter.
Mollie Gillen had acquired so much extra material for her Chatelaine article that she expanded her research into a book, eventually tracking down the letters Montgomery wrote to George Boyd MacMillan in Scotland before they were destroyed by MacMillan's nephew. The Wheel of Things: A Biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery was published by Fitzhenry and Whiteside in 1975 and was the first book length biography to use all the original unpublished Montgomery letters, as well as interviews with relatives, to pull back the curtain a little farther on the private life of the author. Fitzhenry and Whiteside also published The Alpine Path in book form for the first time in 1975.
Gillen had other writing commitments and could not return to Montgomery work after 1975. Dr. Bolger and Dr. Elizabeth Epperly then edited portions of the MacMillan letters -- My Dear Mr. M.: Letters to G.B. MacMillan from L.M. Montgomery, Author of Anne of Green Gables was published in 1980.
When scholar Mary Rubio was mulling over dissertation topics, she was influenced by Gillen's biography and Waterston's mention of Montgomery's journals to consider Montgomery. However, Dr. Stuart Macdonald was not ready to allow access to the journals. Nonetheless, Rubio and Dr. Macdonald became friends and eventually, near the end of his life, the papers were sold to the University of Guelph archives for Rubio to edit and develop. The five volumes of The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery (and Complete Journals of the PEI Years, vol. 1,2) were published from 1985 to 2013. Jen Rubio has continued her mother's work by publishing complete editions of the rest of the journals except for the last two volumes which were only lightly edited in the Selected Journal editions. Rubio and Waterston used these as the basis for a short biography of Montgomery in 1995 called Writing a Life.
A good overview, up to the 1990s, of Montgomery and her works, is L.M. Montgomery, written by Genevieve Wiggins in 1992. The release of Montgomery's diaries provided ample material for many more small "biographies" summarized primarily from the journals. More Montgomery new material was made public in 2006 when the rest of the Weber letters were published, After Green Gables: L.M. Montgomery’s Letters to Ephraim Weber, 1916-1941.
Biographical material was published through other venues as well. In 2000, the L.M. Montgomery Institute released a multi-media collection of Montgomery information on its CD-ROM, The Bend in the Road. The founder of the Institute, Dr. Elizabeth Epperly, curated an online exhibition of Montgomery's life in 2002: Picturing a Canadian Life: L.M. Montgomery's Personal Scrapbooks and Book Covers. In 2008, The L.M. Montgomery Collection with Montgomery photographs from the University of Guelph archives was made available online. In 2023 new online material has been published at The Original Manuscript of Anne of Green Gables.
In the fall of 2008, during the Anne of Green Gables centennial year, Dr. Mary Rubio's extensive biography, The Gift of Wings, was published. Rubio spent 25 years interviewing people and ingesting every piece of available Montgomery information and scholarship -- readers can see the scope of it in her acknowledgments and select bibliography.
In November of 2008, biographer Mollie Gillen celebrated her 100th birthday (she received cards from Queen Elizabeth and the mayor of Toronto) with relatives, her publisher, and friends sending best wishes from the Montgomery fans around the world.
The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career. Everywoman’s World, 1917. Markham, ON: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1975.
Ridley, Hilda M. The Story of L.M. Montgomery. Toronto: Ryerson, 1956. London: George G. Harrap, 1956.
The Green Gables Letters from L.M. Montgomery to Ephraim Weber, 1905-1909. Edited by Wilfrid Eggleston. Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1960.
Waterston, Elizabeth. “Lucy Maud Montgomery 1874-1942.” In The Clear Spirit: Twenty Canadian Women and Their Times, edited by Mary Quayle Innis, 198-219. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966.
Gillen, Mollie. “Maud Montgomery: The Girl Who Wrote Green Gables.” Chatelaine, July 1973, 40-42,52-56.
Bolger, Francis W.P. The Years Before “Anne." 1974. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 1991.
Gillen, Mollie. The Wheel of Things: A Biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery. Don Mills, ON: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1975.
Gillen, Mollie. Lucy Maud Montgomery. Don Mills, ON: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1978.
My Dear Mr. M.: Letters to G.B. MacMillan from L.M. Montgomery, Author of Anne of Green Gables. Edited by Francis W.P. Bolger and Elizabeth R. Epperly. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1980.
The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume I - V. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1985 - 2004.
Rubio, Mary, and Elizabeth Waterston. Writing a Life. Canadian Biography Series. Toronto: ECW Press, 1995.
McCabe, Kevin, comp. The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album. Edited by Alexandra Heilbron. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1999.
"The Rescue of the Montgomery-MacMillan Letters" (The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album, compiled by Kevin McCabe, edited by Alexandra Heilbron, Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1999)
After Green Gables: L.M. Montgomery’s Letters to Ephraim Weber, 1916-1941. Edited by Hildi Froese Tiessen and Paul Gerard Tiessen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
Rubio, Mary Henley. Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2008.
Ridley, Hilda M. The Story of L.M. Montgomery. Toronto: Ryerson, 1956. London: George G. Harrap, 1956.
The Green Gables Letters from L.M. Montgomery to Ephraim Weber, 1905-1909. Edited by Wilfrid Eggleston. Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1960.
Waterston, Elizabeth. “Lucy Maud Montgomery 1874-1942.” In The Clear Spirit: Twenty Canadian Women and Their Times, edited by Mary Quayle Innis, 198-219. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966.
Gillen, Mollie. “Maud Montgomery: The Girl Who Wrote Green Gables.” Chatelaine, July 1973, 40-42,52-56.
Bolger, Francis W.P. The Years Before “Anne." 1974. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 1991.
Gillen, Mollie. The Wheel of Things: A Biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery. Don Mills, ON: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1975.
Gillen, Mollie. Lucy Maud Montgomery. Don Mills, ON: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1978.
My Dear Mr. M.: Letters to G.B. MacMillan from L.M. Montgomery, Author of Anne of Green Gables. Edited by Francis W.P. Bolger and Elizabeth R. Epperly. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1980.
The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume I - V. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1985 - 2004.
Rubio, Mary, and Elizabeth Waterston. Writing a Life. Canadian Biography Series. Toronto: ECW Press, 1995.
McCabe, Kevin, comp. The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album. Edited by Alexandra Heilbron. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1999.
"The Rescue of the Montgomery-MacMillan Letters" (The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album, compiled by Kevin McCabe, edited by Alexandra Heilbron, Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1999)
After Green Gables: L.M. Montgomery’s Letters to Ephraim Weber, 1916-1941. Edited by Hildi Froese Tiessen and Paul Gerard Tiessen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
Rubio, Mary Henley. Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2008.
