“All my life it has been my aim to write a book.” The Journals of L. M. Montgomery

As a girl, I devoured books by Lucy Maud Montgomery (who was known as Maud to her friends and family). I read and re-read the Annes and the Emilys. I loved the stand-alone book, A Tangled Web, that my grandmother gave me when I came for a visit. The summer between my junior and senior year in high school, a classmate sent me home with two shopping bags full of Maud books I’d never read before. I passed the weeks curled up on the couch reading the Story Girl and Pat books, a handful of stand-alone novels, and a couple sets of short stories. In college, I read a Maud biography. I was an all-in fan.

In my late twenties, my friend Jamie and I discovered Maud’s selected journals, a five-volume collection that started when Maud was fourteen and ended days before her death at sixty-seven (covering the years 1889-1942). I am not exaggerating when I say I’ve never been the same as a reader or writer since that initial deep dive into Maud’s world. She was a gifted storyteller no matter the subject. Our lives share some similarities and many differences, though I doubt I would have interested Maud as a person or writer (she was pretty opinionated!). Once I finished, I committed to rereading the journals every ten years. This year marks my third time through.

This time I’ll be reading Maud’s complete journals, which weren’t available twenty plus years ago (and are as yet unfinished). The last time through I posted extensively about each volume here on the blog. I don’t know how much I’ll be sharing this round, but for a taste of the books I wanted to re-post some of my observations from the selected journals volume one:

The first volume of Maud’s (selected) journals covers her life from ages fourteen through thirty-five. She starts as a school girl (not above school yard spats and secret indulgences in novels during lesson time); spends a year with her father in Saskatchewan, studies at Prince of Wales College and Dalhousie University; teaches three years in different communities in Prince Edward Island, works one year as a copyeditor at a Nova Scotia newspaper; experiences six proposals, two engagements, and one secret love affair; and spends more than a decade as her grandmother’s companion and caretaker, all the while reading, writing, and dreaming of the literary life.

All my life is has been my aim to write a book — a “real live” book… Well, I’ve written my book. The dream dreamed years ago in that old brown desk in school has come true at last after years of toil and struggle. And the realization is sweet — almost as sweet as the dream!

Maud’s first novel, Anne of Green Gables, sold to L.C. Page and Co., the fifth publishing house she submitted to. By that time she had been tirelessly writing, submitting, and selling short stories and poems for over fifteen years. Writing had become a daily part of her life, as had a faithful study of the magazine market. 

Blessings be on the inventors of the alphabet, pen and printing press! Life would be — to me in all events — a terrible thing without books.

As well as writing, Maud read broadly and deeply. She often re-read childhood favorites, studying to see if they held up as the years passed but also refusing to let popular opinion sway her preferences. She compared author’s newer works to their older titles, pursued the bestsellers and the classics, and collected phrases that spoke to her.

After selling Anne of Green Gables in 1907, she quickly went on to sell the sequel, Anne of Avonlea, then Kilmeny of the Orchard (a re-worked story that had previously run as a magazine serial) and The Story Girl (her personal favorite).

The road of literature is at first a very slow one…and I mean to work patiently on until I win — as I believe I shall, sooner or later — recognition and success.

Maud’s life was not an easy one, yet the books she left the world are full of joy and beauty. I’ll leave you with two more quotes about Anne of Green Gables:

8/16/1907 It [Anne of Green Gables] was a labor of love. Nothing I have ever written gave me so much pleasure to write. I cast “moral” and “Sunday School” ideals to the winds and made my “Anne” a real human girl… . There is plenty of incident in it but after all it must stand or fall by “Anne”. She is the book.

… I wrote it for love, not money — but very often such books are the most successful…

10/15/1908 It seems that Anne is a big success. It is a “best seller” and is in its fifth edition — I cannot realize this. My strongest feeling seems to be incredulity. I can’t believe that such a simple little tale, written in and of a simple P.E.I. farming settlement, with a juvenile audience in view, can really have scored out in the busy world. I have had so many nice letters about it — and no end of reviews. Most of them were very flattering. Three or four had a rather contemptuous tone and three were really nasty.

One of the reviews says “the book radiates happiness and optimism.” When I think of the conditions of worry and gloom and care under which it was written I wonder at this. Thank God, I can keep the shadows of my life out of my work. I would not wish to darken any other life — I want instead to be a messenger of optimism and sunshine.

Thank you, Maud, for the sunshine you brought to my young life. I am forever grateful.