More than 50 million copies of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables have been sold in 36 different languages across the world! Most people know about red-headed Anne with her high-spiritedness and big imagination, but fewer know about Lucy Maud Montgomery’s story and the discipline she had to create the classic Anne of Green Gables.
Montgomery loved writing from a very young age. She kept a diary as a young girl and continued to journal throughout her life. Although she is most famous for Anne of Green Gables, Montgomery was writing long before its publication. When she was sixteen, her poem “The Legend of Cape Leforce” was published in the Charlottetown Patriot. She wrote in her journal about her excitement when seeing her name in print for the first time! Montgomery continued to write throughout her life while attending Prince of Wales College, teaching in PEI, studying at Dalhousie, and taking care of her grandmother in Cavendish.
“For five months I got up at six o’clock and got dressed by the lamplight. The fire would not yet be on. The house was very cold but I would put on a heavy coat, sit with my feet up to keep them from freezing and with fingers so cramped that I could scarcely hold a pen. I would write my stunt for the day. Sometimes it would be a poem in which I would carol blithely of blue skies and rippling brooks and flowery meads! Then I would thaw out my hands, eat breakfast and go to school. When people say to me, as they occasionally do, ‘Oh how I envy your gift, how I wish I could write as you do’, I am inclined to wonder, with some inward amusement, how much they would have envied me on those dark, cold, winter mornings of my apprenticeship.”
By 1901, Montgomery began making a livable income through writing. But this does not mean everything she wrote was accepted. Far from it. Nine out of ten writings she sent to publishers got rejected. Montgomery wrote Anne of Green Gables in 1905, writing in the evenings after her regular work day. Most of the book was written at the window in her little gable room in Cavendish. You can visit Montgomery’s Cavendish Home in the summer months to learn more about her life in Cavendish.
Although Anne of Green Gables became an instant best-seller, it was not an easy road to get Anne of Green Gables published. Montgomery sent the manuscript to multiple publishers, all of which rejected her manuscript. After many tries, Montgomery put “Anne” away in an old hat box for a long time. One day, she came across it and decided to try again. This time, in 1908, Anne of Green Gables was published!
“Today has been, as Anne herself would say “an epoch in my life”. My book came today, fresh from the publishers. I candidly confess that it was for me a proud, wonderful, thrilling moment! There in my hand lay the material realization of all the dreams and hopes and ambitions and struggles of my whole conscious existence–my first book!.” (Rubio & Waterston 335)
Of course, Montgomery’s writing did not stop there. She went on to write the sequel, Anne of Avonlea and continued to write books, short stories, and poems throughout her life. But Montgomery said that nothing she had written had given her so much joy to write as Anne of Green Gables.
She wrote, “I cast “moral” and “Sunday School” ideals to the winds and made my “Anne” a real human girl. Many of my own childhood experiences and dreams were worked up into its chapters. Cavendish scenery supplied the background and Lover’s Lane figures very prominently. There is plenty of incident in it but after all, it must stand or fall by Anne. She is the book.” (Montgomery 331)
Today, visitors can walk through Lover’s Lane, The Haunted Woods Trails, and to Montgomery Park where they can envision the scenery that Anne of Green Gables was set in. The inspiration for the Lake of Shining Waters is the pond by Montgomery’s cousin’s home, now known as The Anne of Green Gables Museum. You can explore these locations that shaped Lucy Maud Montgomery’s literary masterpiece, Anne of Green Gables, where you will not only step into the captivating world of Anne’s imagination but also witness the indomitable spirit and dedication that fueled Montgomery’s own remarkable journey.
Sources:
Montgomery, Lucy Maud. The Alpine Path. The Story of My Career. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. 2016.
Rubio & Waterston. The Select Journals of L.M. Montgomery Volume I. Don Mills, Oxford University Press, 2000.