Lucy Maud Montgomery Biography

Lucy Maude Montgomery—or Maud (without the e), as she affectionately liked to be called—is best known for her eight “Anne” books, beginning with Anne of Green Gables and ending with Anne of Ingleside. The series stars the orphan Anne, who finds a home by getting adopted by a brother and sister, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, who farm on Prince Edward Island. Montgomery wrote similar stories with female protagonists, such as Emily in Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, and Emily’s Quest; Pat in Pat of Silverbush and Mistress Pat; and Jane in Jane of Lantern Hill, but the Anne series became the most famous and Prince Edward Island the setting for all but one of her twenty-one novels.

It can be argued that Montgomery’s characters were autobiographical. Montgomery was a writer at heart, keeping a journal as a child, and imagining all sorts of characters. She wrote her first poem at nine, sent many off for publication at twelve, and published her first poem in the local paper at fifteen. The story of Anne began as a note in one of her daybooks. Maud sometimes thought of herself as an orphan, and she read books such as Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess (1905) and Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1849-1850).

Maud was the only child of Hugh John Montgomery and Clara Woolner Macneill, of upper English and Scottish society. Her mother died of tuberculosis when Maud was only twenty-one months old. Her father left her living with her elderly and stern maternal grandparents, visiting only occasionally until she was ten, when he moved to Canada’s frontiers. Although he was absent for most of her childhood, she adored him. When her father married a twenty-four-year-old woman, Maud was fifteen, and she traveled by train to live with them in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. After only a year, Montgomery returned home to Prince Edward Island.

At sixteen, Montgomery was expected to marry or start a career. Always desiring to be a writer, however, she wanted a college degree. She saved her money, and with some help from her father and grandparents, was able to attend Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, where she excelled and won awards for her writing. She worked as a teacher and journalist and studied further at Dahlhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When her maternal grandmother became ill, Maud moved back to Prince Edward Island to care for her. Maud’s father died suddenly...