Customer Reviews

The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery: Vol. 1, 1889-1910

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I am 40 years old and have kept a journal for 29 years, therefore, the journal format fascinates me. I adore Lucy Maud Montgomery's works and in 1992, I made a trip to Prince Edward Island to visit all her old haunts with my daugter and my girlfriend and her daughter. I purchased the first two journals while there. If you, dear reader, would like to know what went on in Lucy's (called Maud by everyone) mind and heart from the tender, turbulent age of 14 until her mid-thirties, I highly recommend this book. It will transport you to a simpler time, an era where people read more, pondered in greater depth, made visiting one another a social art. There was no television, computers, internet and telephones had just come into existence. The automobile was invented during these years. The book is fascinating in a historical realm as well as entering Maud's mind and gaining a perspective on her outlook of life and those around her. I enjoyed this book thoroughly and anyone who is a fan of Lucy Maud Montgomery will relish this book and treasure it greatly. It added dimension to my life because people have always intriged me and what their thoughts are, and where they get inspiration to write about their ideas. By reading this book, it added music and dimension to my soul. She freely discusses her love life and her miseries and joys. Read it! You will never forget it. The following journals that were published were just as compelling to read. I own them all in my personal library. My thanks to the publishers: Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston.

I picked up this volume in a bed and breafast on Prince Edward Island a few years ago. I ran out and bought it while I was there and ordered the next 2 volumes soon after. I've been a huge "Anne" fan since I was 12 years old. Montgomery's journals make the author seem as alive as the fictional character she created. They offer insight into the author's life, her work, and the time in which she lived. I was surprised about how frank she is about her own love life and about her feelings for "Anne." A great read which may inspire you to start a journal of your own.

L.M. Montgomery wrote at the time when journalists were clamouring for details of the life of the author of the bestselling 'Anne of Green Gables', that she would give them no really personal information about herself - that was only to be found in her private journals.

It is very interesting for a lover of the 'Anne' books to read of L.M. Montgomery's life in that one sees flashes of incidents or a turn of expression that reveals her to be the creator of Anne.

This first part of her journals traverses L.M. Montgomery's young girlhood, in which she goes to a school which is like the school Anne goes to, and to college where she takes First Class, as Anne does, teaches as Anne eventually does as well. It is also interesting that L.M. Montgomery herself faced the prospect of marrying the wrong man, as her first engagement was a disaster - Anne later reels back from commiting herself to the wrong person.

But the journals are far more complex than that - L.M. Montgomery's deeper passions and even sexual desires are alluded at - and this has no place in the 'Anne' books. She is also unhappy for a lot of the time. She herself said it was a wonder that the difficulties in her own life did not come through in her writing - but she was happy as she wanted to give only optimism and joy through her books.

The journals give an insight to the conflicts within L.M. Montgomery because of her conservative, pragmatic pride warring with her shockingly powerful passions and emotions.

Obviously this is for fans of L M Montgomery - if you know and love her writing, you will recognise among the friends and acquaintances of her youth the characters that people Anne of Green Gable's turbulent world. But this wonderful journal is much more than that - it is a fascinating insight into a world which is long gone.

We read of Maud's complex family arrangements, her desire to be a good teacher and disappointment with some of her placements. Her small victories selling stories to publications, and the seemingly endless stream of suitors who proclaim love for her (my favourite is the hapless Mr Mustard). It is a tale of love found and not acted on (and the agonies that accompany it), familial obligations, frustrated talents and beautiful Canadian country side. It tells of heppiness, despair, joy and nostalgia, and is as engagingly written as any fabulous novel.

By all means read this if you wish to understand the creator of one of the world's most engaging literary characters, but also to have a glimpse of a world none of us will ever see the likes of.

I give this book a very high recommendation and think anyone who reads it will love it as much as I did. I have read a few biographys on L. M. Montgomery but reading her own thoughts, in her own words was even more interesting and insightful. I am looking forward to reading the next journal.

A fascinating look into LMM's early years. I couldn't put it down. I highly recommend Mary Rubio's The Gift Of Wings for more insight into this complex, sensitive, brilliant writer's life.

This is the most interesting and enjoyable diary I've ever read. It's no wonder that this was a best-seller when it was first published. L. M. Montgomery, who liked to be called Maud, was a remarkable novelist and diarist. Most of her readers love her for the Anne and Emily books, and I'm a fan of her fiction myself, but I believe her greatest literary achievement was her journals. I also believe that her best novels which will live on are the first two Emily books, Anne of Green Gables, Anne's House of Dreams, Rilla of Ingleside, and the Blue Castle. Also, of her thousand or more poems and short stories, about a dozen of them are outstanding little works which should not perish.

These early journals start when Maud was 14 and end when she's 36, a year before her marriage to the Rev. Ewan Macdonald. Maud's ability to pen a compelling narrative makes the journals read almost like a novel. She writes about her teenage years full of friendships; her year-long stay with her father and his bitchy new wife with whom she didn't get along; her college days full of classes and courtships (she would turn down several marriage proposals); her years as a teacher when she met and fell madly in love with the eldest son of the family she was boarding with; and then the dull and frustrating years of living with and looking after her aging grandmother, which nevertheless did have its happy days, including professional success as a writer, the peak of which was the publication of her classic "Anne of Green Gables." This journal is a most remarkable achievement of a most remarkable woman.

David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness"