L.M. Montgomery
Author biography. Trumpet Publishing House Authors Directory.
Who she was
Lucy Maud Montgomery was born at Clifton, Prince Edward Island, on November 30, 1874, and died in Toronto on April 24, 1942. Her mother died when she was twenty-one months old, and her father, unable or unwilling to keep her, left her with her maternal grandparents in Cavendish.
She was raised by elderly people in a strict household, taught school, worked briefly as a newspaper proofreader, and cared for her grandmother for years before she could marry. She wrote around the edges of all of it.
Why she wrote it
She took a note from her own files, about a couple who sent for an orphan boy and were sent a girl instead, and built a novel from it. She wrote it in 1905. Publishers rejected it repeatedly and she put the manuscript away in a hatbox. She sent it out again, and it was published in 1908.
The orphan sent to a household that had asked for something else is not an invention. It is near enough her own position, and the book is written from inside that experience rather than about it.
The book we publish, and why
We publish Anne of Green Gables as a Digital Junior Genius Reader.
Anne is too talkative, too imaginative, forever apologizing for being herself, and in the end she is the making of everyone around her. Marilla, who begins as a hard woman doing her duty, is changed by her without ever being lectured.
The benefit is that girls meet a heroine whose character is her usefulness. Anne is not admired for being pretty or lucky, and her imagination is not treated as a flaw to grow out of. It is shown doing real work in a hard household on a working farm.
How to read it with a child
Read aloud from about seven, independently from about nine. The vocabulary is richer than most modern children's writing and Anne's speeches are long, which is a feature rather than a problem.
Let the long speeches run. Children who find them funny are getting the book exactly as intended, since Montgomery finds them funny too. Marilla's dryness is the other half of the joke and is easy to miss when reading aloud, so give her the pause she needs.
The question afterward is about Marilla rather than Anne. Ask what changed in her, and when. Children notice the moment, usually long before they can explain it.
Pair it with
- The Junior Genius Method, our approach of Read, Notice, Write, Recite, Remember, Question, Apply, which the Digital Junior Genius Reader edition is built around.
- Johanna Spyri, Heidi. Two children placed with elderly relatives who did not expect them, and two households changed by it.
- Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess, for a girl ready for a heroine tested harder.
Her principal works
- Anne of Green Gables, 1908, followed by Anne of Avonlea, 1909, and a series running to eight books.
- Kilmeny of the Orchard, 1910.
- The Story Girl, 1911.
- Emily of New Moon, 1923, and two further Emily books. Considered by many her most personal work.
- The Blue Castle, 1926. One of her few novels for adults.
- Jane of Lantern Hill, 1937.
- Journals, kept from girlhood until shortly before her death and published long after.
General reference on L.M. Montgomery. External links open outside Trumpet Publishing House.
Our editions
This collection grows as further editions and formats are added, so it is worth returning to.
All Trumpet editions by L.M. Montgomery