So far only one side of Miss Montgomery’s ancestry has been mentioned. The Montgomerys of the Island are equally famous with the Macneills. Miss Montgomery’s father’s father was Senator Montgomery who lived to a great age and long represented the Island at Ottawa. There is a story that the Montgomery family came to live in Prince Edward Island by the determination of a woman. On a certain ship from Scotland came a Montgomery and his wife and family. The voyage was long and stormy and finally the ship’s supply of drinking water was almost at an end. Mrs. Montgomery had been constantly seasick for more than six weeks. The captain pitying her when he sent his sailors ashore to the Island which was the nearest land, said she might go with them. The lady accepted the captain’s offer. But when the sailors were ready to return to the ship she declared that nothing would induce her to set foot on shipboard again. Expostulation was in vain. Mrs. Montgomery remained firm and as a matter of necessity her husband and children had to be landed on Prince Edward Island. There are descendants of this lady living in most of the nine Canadian provinces to-day. Miss L. M. Montgomery is one of them. The true benefit and blessing which comes to those who read Miss Montgomery’s stories is in her delineation of a sane, wholesome and delightful social fabric. Here are standards which have not been confused or broken. Fever and strife do not exist in these stories. Stalwart character, strength of will, intellectual and moral soundness, goodwill, gayety, common sense and happiness are rated simply as the best things in life. There is no preaching. Money is a servant, not a master. Luxury is never mentioned. The foundation of the northern character which Miss Montgomery shows us is well and truly laid. Laughter and happiness and health are accompaniment of good life which is normal life. Something like this is the interpretation of Miss Montgomery’s work as a story-writer which is at the same time an interpretation of Prince Edward Island. No wonder that the hearts of Islanders in their dreams turn home.
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES REVIEW (I)
From: L. C. Page & Company’s Announcement List for New Fiction, 1908
By L. M. Montgomery. Cloth decorative, illustrated $1.50 Every one, young or old, who reads the story of “Anne of Green Gables,” will fall in love with her, and tell their friends of her irresistible charm. In her creation of the young heroine of this delightful tale Miss Montgomery will receive praise for her fine sympathy with and delicate appreciation of sensitive and imaginative girlhood.
The story would take rank for the character of Anne alone: but in the delineation of the characters of the old farmer, and his crabbed, dried-up spinster sister who adopt her, the author has shown an insight and descriptive power which add much to the fascination of the book.
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES REVIEW (II)
From: The Living Age, August 15, 1908 p. 446
Let it be said at the beginning that “Anne of Green Gables,” by L. M. Montgomery, is not a second Rebecca, for, as there are already some twenty-five “second Rebeccas,” without counting the apparently intentional Rebecca Mary, such an Introduction might not be a recommendation. Anne Shirley, Anne with an “e,” comes from a Nova Scotia orphan asylum to Prince Edward’s Island to be informally adopted by an elderly brother and sister to whom she discourses endlessly. “Ten minutes by the clock” is one listener’s measure of her eloquence. More than two pages by the eye is the reader’s observation, but it is amusing talk, and so entirely American that one fully expects that the inevitable sequel will reveal her American birth. This book leaves her crowned with the highest honors of Queen’s College, and showing herself worthy of them by unselfish devotion to the good woman who has sheltered her for five years. She is but sixteen years of age and many things may yet happen. Meantime, no one who has made her acquaintance is likely to forget her or to neglect the sequel when It arrives. Anne of Green Gables is a girl to remember. L. C. Page & Co.
From: The Editor, July 1912
OUR WOMEN
From: Canadian Poems of the Great War, edited by John William Garvin, McClelland & Stewart, 1918
The popular Canadian novelist. Author of ‘Anne of Green Gables,’ ‘Anne of Avonlea,’ ‘Kilmeny of the Orchard,’ ‘The Story Girl,’ ‘Chronicles of Avonlea,’ ‘The Golden Road,’ ‘Anne of the Island,’ ‘The Watchman and Other Poems,’ ‘Anne’s House of Dreams,’ etc. Lucy Maud Montgomery was born at Clinton, Prince Edward Island, but lived from infancy in Cavendish, of the same province. Her father was Hugh John, son of the Hon. Donald Montgomery, Senator. Educated at the ‘district school,’ at Prince of Wales College, Charlottetown, and at Dalhousie College, Halifax. Married, in 1911, Rev. Ewan Macdonald, Presbyterian Minister at Leaskdale, Ontario.
OUR WOMEN
BRIDE of a day, your eye is bright,
And the flower of your cheek is red.
‘He died with a smile on a field of France —
I smile for his sake,’ she said.
Mother of one, the babe you bore
Sleeps in a chilly bed.
‘He gave himself with a gallant pride —
Shall I be less proud?’ she said.
Woman, you weep and sit apart,
Whence is your sorrow fed?
‘I have none of love or kin to go —
I am shamed and sad,’ she said.
LETTERS FROM THE LITERATI
L. M. Montgomery
There isn’t really much to say regarding my literary career. It has been made up of two elements: “hard work” and “stick to it.” I can’t remember when I wasn’t writing and planning to be a “really truly” author when I grew up. Sometimes I wrote prose, and then all the not very exciting incidents of my quiet little life were described. I wrote descriptions of my favorite haunts, “biographies” of my pets, accounts of visits and school goings-on — even “critical” reviews of the books I read. Sometimes I wrote verses about flowers and months, or addressed “lines” to my school chums and enthused over sunsets. From fifteen to eighteen my ambition was satisfied with having some of my verses published in the “Poet’s Corner” of my home newspaper. Then I essayed a wider flight, and after many heart-breaking rejections — I truly considered these heart-breaking then — The Ladies’ World of New York accepted a poem of mine and paid me two subscriptions to the magazine for it!
During the next two years I wrote a good deal and learned a good deal but still my manuscripts came back, except such as were sent to periodicals whose editors evidently thought that literature was its own reward and quite independent of monetary considerations.
Then came another wonderful day when I received a check for five dollars from Golden Days for a short story. Never in my life, before or since, have I felt so rich.
Then followed several years in which I wrote hundreds of stories for Sunday School publications and juveniles generally. But I wanted to do more enduring work. Of course, like every other scribbler, I meant to write a book some day. I knew just what kind of book — a very serious affair, with a complicated plot and Dickensonion wealth of character. But I never seemed to get ready to go at it. Then the editor of a Sunday School weekly asked me to write a short serial of seven chapters for his paper. I looked through my notebook of “ideas” and found a faded entry, written many years before. “Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for a boy. By mistake a girl is sent them.” I thought this would do for the central idea of my serial. I blocked out a few chapters, intending to write-a nice little yarn about a good little girl, with a snug little moral tucked away in it, like a pill in a spoonful of jam. And if I had had time to go at it at once that is likely all it would have been. But I did not have time, and in the weeks that followed I “brooded” the tale in my mind. The little heroine began to expand in such a fashion before my inner vision that I soon saw I could never confine her career within the limits of a seven chapter serial. The result was my first book, “Anne of Green Gables” — a very different book from that which I had fondly dreamed of writing. But — Anne has won love where the “big” book would probably have failed to win even interest
.
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends
Rough-hew them as we will,”
“ANNE OF GREEN GABLES” READY
From: Motion Picture News, November 15, 1919
Exteriors Were Delayed Owing to Inclement Weather in East; New Film to be Shot in West
Realart Pictures Corporation announces for prospective release Mary Miles Minter in “Anne of Green Gables,” founded on the four “Anne” books by L. M. Montgomery. The scenario is by Frances Marion and the direction by William Desmond Taylor. No date has been set, but the picture is completed and now in the laboratory being printed.
President Arthur S. Kane has received word from Miss Minter in California that she is overjoyed at finding sunny weather once more. Miss Minter was delayed in the East for many weeks by rainy weather, being held in Massachusetts on exteriors over a month. As a result of this inconvenience, the forthcoming productions will be shot in California, it is said.
Advance showings of “Anne of Green Gables” for Realart officials have caused them to wax enthusiastic over the production. It is reported that instructions have been sent to branch managers to notify exhibitors that this picture is positively the best picture produced by the star up to date.
The story of the books of “Anne” as worked into the film play show, is full of interest, and Realart officials say the scenario provides much suitable material for Miss Minter. The “Anne” books have been circulated by hundreds of thousands, it is claimed, and Realart believes there are few girls who have not read these stories of American girlhood. The appeal of the new film is declared by Realart to be universal, and the production will mark a long step forward for the star.
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES FILM REVIEW, 1920
From: The Shelby Beacon, Ellwood City, Pennsylvania January 9, 1920
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14th
Real Art presents Mary Miles Minter in “Anne of Green Gables,” from L. M. Montgomery’s four famous “Anne’’ books. You will just love her and the children will too. This is a family picture. Bring them all along. The picture deals of a girl named Anne Shirley. She was never outside of the Orphan Asylum, yet she had the grandest times whenever she wanted any. Why she’d simply imagine she had it and presto! But the sun broke through at last. Anne was to be farmed out and she was soon on her way to the home of Marilla and Cuthbert. It was the first time that she could remember being outside the orphanage and her joy knew no bounds. Arriving at the station Anne waited and waited, but no one came to claim her and what happened later. Well, see “Anne of Green Gables,” and you will see what did happen. Also Kinograms.
The Delphi Classics Catalogue
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Series One
Anton Chekhov
Charles Dickens
D.H. Lawrence
Dickensiana Volume I
Edgar Allan Poe
Elizabeth Gaskell
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
George Eliot
H. G. Wells
Henry James
Ivan Turgenev
Jack London
James Joyce
Jane Austen
Joseph Conrad
Leo Tolstoy
Louisa May Alcott
Mark Twain
Oscar Wilde
Robert Louis Stevenson
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Walter Scott
The Brontës
Thomas Hardy
Virginia Woolf
Wilkie Collins
William Makepeace Thackeray
Series Two
Alexander Pushkin
Alexandre Dumas (English)
Andrew Lang
Anthony Trollope
Bram Stoker
Christopher Marlowe
Daniel Defoe
Edith Wharton
F. Scott Fitzgerald
G. K. Chesterton
Gustave Flaubert (English)
H. Rider Haggard
Herman Melville
Honoré de Balzac (English)
J. W. von Goethe (English)
Jules Verne
L. Frank Baum
Lewis Carroll
Marcel Proust (English)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nikolai Gogol
O. Henry
Rudyard Kipling
Tobias Smollett
Victor Hugo
William Shakespeare
Series Three
Ambrose Bierce
Ann Radcliffe
Ben Jonson
Charles Lever
Émile Zola
Ford Madox Ford
Geoffrey Chaucer
George Gissing
George Orwell
Guy de Maupassant
H. P. Lovecraft
Henrik Ibsen
Henry David Thoreau
Henry Fielding
J. M. Barrie
James Fenimore Cooper
John Buchan
John Galsworthy
Jonathan Swift
Kate Chopin
Katherine Mansfield
L. M. Montgomery
Laurence Sterne
Mary Shelley
Sheridan Le Fanu
Washington Irving
Series Four
Arnold Bennett
Arthur Machen
Beatrix Potter
Bret Harte
Captain Frederick Marryat
Charles Kingsley
Charles Reade
G. A. Henty
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Wallace
E. M. Forster
E. Nesbit
George Meredith
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Jerome K. Jerome
John Ruskin
Maria Edgeworth
M. E. Braddon
Miguel de Cervantes
M. R. James
R. M. Ballantyne
Robert E. Howard
Samuel Johnson
Stendhal
Stephen Crane
Zane Grey
Series Five
Algernon Blackwood
Anatole France
Beaumont and Fletcher
Charles Darwin
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Edward Gibbon
E. F. Benson
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Friedrich Nietzsche
George Bernard Shaw
George MacDonald
Hilaire Belloc
John Bunyan
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 796