Who ultimately is L.M. Montgomery, and why was there such an obsession with secrecy, hiding, and encoding in her life and fiction? Delving into the hidden life of Canada's most enigmatic writer, The Intimate Life of L.M. Montgomery answers these questions. The eleven essays illuminate Montgomery's personal writings and photographic self-portraits and probe the ways in which she actively shaped her life as a work of art. This is the first book to investigate Montgomery's personal writings, which filled thousands of pages in journals and a memoir, correspondence, scrapbooks, and photography. Using theories of autobiography and life writing, the essays probe the author's flair for the dramatic and her exuberance in costuming, while also exploring the personal facts behind some of her fiction, including the beloved Anne of Green Gables. Focussing on topics such as sexuality, depression, marriage, aging, illness, and writing, the essays strip away the layers of art and artifice that disguised Montgomery's most intensely guarded secrets, including details of her affair with Herman Leard, her marriage with Ewen Macdonald, and her friendships with Nora Lefurgey and Isabel Anderson. The book also includes rare photographs taken by Montgomery and others, many of which have not previously appeared in print. One of the highlights of The Intimate Life of L.M. Montgomery is the inclusion of a secret diary that Montgomery wrote with Lefurgey in 1903. This hilarious document is a rare find, for Montgomery's teasing banter presents us with a new voice that is distinct from the sombre tone of her journals. Published here for the first time, more than 100 years after its composition, this diary is virtually unknown to readers and scholars and is a welcome addition to the literature on this important figure. This volume fills in many of the blanks surrounding Montgomery's personal life. Engaging and erudite, it is a boon for scholars and Montgomery fans alike.

Mary Henley Rubio has spent over two decades researching Montgomery’s life, and has put together a comprehensive and penetrating picture of this Canadian literary icon, all set in rich social context. Extensive interviews with people who knew Montgomery – her son, maids, friends, relatives, all now deceased – are only part of the material gathered in a journey to understand Montgomery that took Rubio to Poland and the highlands of Scotland. From Montgomery’s apparently idyllic childhood in Prince Edward Island to her passion-filled adolescence and young adulthood, to her legal fights as world-famous author, to her shattering experiences with motherhood and as wife to a deeply troubled man, this fascinating, intimate narrative of her life will engage and delight.

An affecting biography of the author of Anne of Green Gables is the first for young readers to include revelations about her last days and to encompass the complexity of a brilliant and sometimes troubled life. Once upon a time, there was a girl named Maud who adored stories. When she was fourteen years old, Maud wrote in her journal, “I love books. I hope when I grow up to be able to have lots of them.” Not only did Maud grow up to own lots of books, she wrote twenty-four of them herself as L. M. Montgomery, the world-renowned author of Anne of Green Gables. For many years, not a great deal was known about Maud’s personal life. Her childhood was spent with strict, undemonstrative grandparents, and her reflections on writing, her lifelong struggles with anxiety and depression, her “year of mad passion,” and her difficult married life remained locked away, buried deep within her unpublished personal journals. Through this revealing and deeply moving biography, kindred spirits of all ages who, like Maud, never gave up “the substance of things hoped for” will be captivated anew by the words of this remarkable woman.

Lucy Maud Montgomery's scrapbooks from the years 1893 to 1910 provide a revealing look into her life and inspiration during the time she created the beloved character of Anne Shirley while living on Prince Edward Island as a college student, teacher, and writer. In "Imagining Anne," over 100 pages of the scrapbooks are fully and beautifully reproduced in colour, and the significance of the souvenirs and clippings Montgomery collected are explained by Elizabeth Rollins Epperly. This beautiful gift book is a must-have for all Montgomery fans, lovers of Canadian history, and scrapbook enthusiasts.

Elizabeth Waterston is a 2011 Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada. The final volume of the immensely successful The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery covers the years 1935 to 1942, the year of Montgomery's death. No longer dwelling in a farm community or a small rural village, Lucy Maud Montgomery explored life in downtown Toronto. Here she experienced the cultural riches the city had to offer while finding friendship and neighbourliness in the suburb of Swansea. The journal chronicles her hopes and satisfaction with her new home and neighbourhood, but also her struggles with her own and her husband's recurring bouts of depression, her worries about her sons' academic performance, and her thoughts on the world events during these years. The final volume in the series offers an intimate eyewitness account of life in a growing city, a friendly neighbourhood, a changing world, and of a troubling family dynamic from 1935 to 1942, all recorded with Lucy Maud Montgomery's sharp eye and characteristic wit.

The celebrated author of Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon receives much-deserved additional consideration in L.M. Montgomery and Gender. Nineteen contributors take a variety of critical and theoretical positions, from historical analyses of the White Feather campaign and discussions of adoption to medical discourses of death and disease, explorations of Montgomery’s use of humour, and the author’s rewriting of masculinist traditions. The essays span Montgomery’s writing, exploring her famous Anne and Emily books as well as her short fiction, her comic journal composed with her friend Nora Lefurgey, and less-studied novels such as Magic for Marigold and The Blue Castle. Dividing the chapters into five sections – on masculinities and femininities, domestic space, humour, intertexts, and being in time – L.M. Montgomery and Gender addresses the degree to which Montgomery’s work engages and exposes, reflects and challenges the gender roles around her, underscoring how her writing has shaped future representations of gender. Of interest to historians, feminists, gender scholars, scholars of literature, and Montgomery enthusiasts, this wide-ranging collection builds on the depth of current scholarship in its approach to the complexity of gender in the works of one of Canada’s best-loved authors.

Now available in paperback, The L.M. Montgomery Reader assembles rediscovered primary material on one of Canada’s most enduringly popular authors, spanning the entirety of her high-profile career and the years since her death. The second volume, A Critical Heritage, narrates the development of L.M. Montgomery’s critical reputation in the years since her death. It traces milestones and turning points such as adaptations for stage and screen, posthumous publications, and the development of Montgomery Studies as a scholarly field. The introduction also considers Montgomery’s publishing history in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom at a time when her work remained in print not because it was considered part of a university canon of literature, but simply due to the continued interest of readers. Each volume in The L.M. Montgomery Reader is accompanied by an extensive introduction and detailed commentary by leading Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre that traces the interplay between the author and the critic, as well as between the private and the public Montgomery.