Lucy Maud Montgomery, 1874-1942

Lucy Maud Montgomery WWP

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A Canadian author, best known for her Anne of Green Gables novel series.



Lucy Maud Montgomery was born in Clifton in Prince Edward Island, Canada. At 21 months old, following her mother’s death, she went to live with her maternal grandparents in Cavendish. Living with an elderly couple, she spent much of her childhood alone, creating imaginary friends, reading, and writing. By the age of nine, she kept a journal and wrote poetry, and at 16, she published her first poem, On Cape LeForce, in the Charlottetown paper The Daily Patriot.

In 1893, at 18, she attended Prince of Wales College and obtained her teaching license in only one year instead of two. Afterward, she began to work as a teacher in various schools in Prince Edward Island, taking time off to study literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She kept writing, and in 1897, at 23 years old, Montgomery began to publish short stories in newspapers and magazines, reaching more than 100 publications in a decade.

In 1898, she returned to Cavendish to take care of her widowed grandmother, living there for the next 13 years.

In June 1908, she published her first novel and her most known work, Anne of Green Gables, inspired by her childhood experiences in the rural and traditional environment of Prince Edward Island. The book was a best-seller, going through six printings within six months, and later translated to over 36 languages and adapted into dozens of movies, TV series, films, radio, stage, and web production. The book’s success established Montgomery’s career as a novelist.

In 1911, at the age of 37, she married Ewen Macdonald, a Presbyterian minister, and the couple moved to Ontario. In addition to her duties as the minister’s wife, she continued to write and publish her work.
WW1 had a significant impact on her husband. His religious melancholia caused him to decline mentally, and he ended up hospitalized. While taking care of her husband, she wrote another successful book series, Emily of New Moon, also set on Prince Edward Island. In 1926, Montgomery and her husband moved to a new congregation in Norval, Ontario, where they lived until her husband resigned from the ministry. The stress she experienced influenced her writing, and in 1933, she published the book Pat of the Silver Bush, which was darker an aimed toward adult readers rather than young people.

In 1935, they moved to Toronto, where Montgomery had a breakdown that led her to return to her first heroine, Anne, and she published two more books in the series. The outbreak of WW2 had affected her mental and physical health, and by 1941, she did not leave her house. The following year, she died at the age of 67. She is buried in the Cavendish Cemetery on Prince Edward Island.

Montgomery published 20 novels, 500 poems, 530 short stories, and 30 essays during her lifetime.

Heritage Minutes: Lucy Maud Montgomery

Lucy Maud Montgomery battled depression, rejection, and sexism to become known around the world for Anne of Green Gables and 19 other novels. This Heritage Minute tells her story in her own words, as drawn from her journals.

For more information about Lucy Maud Montgomery, visit: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/montgomery-lucy-maud/

Credits:
Lucy Maud Montgomery – Meghan Greeley
Anne – Nadia Tonen
Narrator – The Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson
Director – Stephen Dunn
Director of Photography – Bobby Shore
Producers -- Peter Lilly, Ryan Tremblay

The journals of L. M. Montgomery are located at the L.M. Montgomery Collection, Archival and Special l Collections, University of Guelph Libraries.

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“It’s delightful when your imaginations come true, isn’t it?”

“It’s delightful when your imaginations come true, isn’t it?”

Fun Facts

  • She had three sons, one of them was stillborn.
  • As a child, while walking through the pastoral Prince Edward Island, she experienced a feeling she called "the flash" - a sensation of tranquility and clarity inspired by the awareness of a higher spiritual power. She wrote this experience into the character of Emily Byrd Starr in the "Emily of New Moon" series.
  • By the time she got married, she had refused four marriage proposals and broke up an engagement.
  • She loved cats and had three cats in a row named “Daffy.”
  • She almost died during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.
  • In 1923, she became the first Canadian woman to be named a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in England.
  • In 1924, the Toronto Star listed her as one of the Twelve Greatest Women in Canada.
  • In 1927, she received a fan letter from British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin with a request to meet him and the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII).
  • She had sued her publisher over the royalties for the first set of Green Gables books. She won.
  • In 1943, she was designated a Person of National Historic Significance by the Government of Canada.
  • The Leaskdale Manse, her home in Ontario (1911-1926), is a National Historic Site of Canada. Her birthplace is a museum in New London.
  • The Lucy Maud Montgomery Memorial Garden in Halton Hills, Ontario, and the Lucy Maud Montgomery Park in Toronto, are named in her honor.
  • The L. M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island promotes scholarly inquiry about her life and work and oversees most of the research and conferences related to her work. The collection consists of her novels, manuscripts, photographs, letters, and sound recordings.
  • Numerous institutions and organizations worldwide are named after Anne Shirley of Green Gables.

Awards

  • Named into the Order of the British Empire (OBE) (1935)

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Heritage Minutes: Lucy Maud Montgomery

Lucy Maud Montgomery battled depression, rejection, and sexism to become known around the world for Anne of Green Gables and 19 other novels. This Heritage Minute tells her story in her own words, as drawn from her journals.

For more information about Lucy Maud Montgomery, visit: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/montgomery-lucy-maud/

Credits:
Lucy Maud Montgomery – Meghan Greeley
Anne – Nadia Tonen
Narrator – The Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson
Director – Stephen Dunn
Director of Photography – Bobby Shore
Producers -- Peter Lilly, Ryan Tremblay

The journals of L. M. Montgomery are located at the L.M. Montgomery Collection, Archival and Special l Collections, University of Guelph Libraries.
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This post is also available in: Español

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Ada Louise Huxtable WWP
Arts

Ada Louise Huxtable, 1921-2013

An architecture critic and a writer. Received the first-ever Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Born Ada Louise Landman in NYC, an only child in a middle-class Jewish family. Growing up in Manhattan, Huxtable loved strolling along the streets, fascinated by its building, such as the Grand Central Terminal, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Museum of Natural History. She studied art at Hunter College, graduating magna cum laude, and then architectural history at NYU Institute of Fine Arts. At the time, she worked in Bloomingdale’s furnishings department, where she met her soon-to-be husband, Garth Huxtable. In 1946, at 25, Huxtable landed a job as an assistant curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. After five years, she left her job to study Italian architecture in Italy for a year. Upon her return, she began writing as a contributing editor for various art and architectural journals. At the age of 37, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, in which she examined the structural and design advances of American architecture. In 1963, 42 years old Huxtable was hired as the first architecture critic at The New York Times, a position she held for almost 20 years. In her column, she wrote about new and old buildings, threatened buildings, and bad-designed buildings. She also mentioned emerging architects, architectural trends, movements, and exhibitions. Huxtable encouraged the everyday readers to look at buildings from a new perspective, not as an assembly of bricks and pilasters but as a public statement with history and meaning. Raising awareness of the city’s heritage, the urban environment, and civic engagement, she set the tone for modern architecture criticism, for which, at the age of 49, she was the first-ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In 1981, at the age of 60, Huxtable received a MacArthur grant that allowed her in-depth research on subjects she was interested in, such as the development of the skyscraper, the negative impact of postmodernism building, and preservation vs. modernity. At 76, she returned to writing for the public as an architecture critic for The Wall Street Journal, publishing columns for the next 15 years. Throughout her career, Huxtable was involved in various committees, serving as a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Architectural Selection and Building Design Committees for the Getty Center, Getty Villa, and as a Jury member for The Pritzker Architecture Prize. She published more than 10 books on architecture, including “Kicked a Building Lately?,” “Goodbye History,” “Hello Hamburger,” and a biography of Frank Lloyd Wright. Huxtable died in NYC at 91. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Adrienne-Rich-WWP
Literature & Poetry

Adrienne Rich, 1929-2012

An award-winning American poet, essayist, and feminist thought influencer, who was called “one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century.”

During her long and productive career, Rich published more than 30 books of poetry and essays. In her writing, she explored issues of gender, racism, consumerism, class privilege, and politics. She was considered a radical figure in Second Wave Feminism, yet she was accepted by the institutions, won many awards, and is now considered a classic. The first one was for the collection of poetry, which she published at 22. The same year she graduated from Radcliffe College. Adrienne Cecile Rich was born in Baltimore, MD, and over the years she taught English, poetry, and creative writing at several institutions, including Swarthmore College, Columbia University, City College of New York, and Scripps College in Claremont. Among her most influential works, were two texts that dissected heterosexuality and motherhood as socially constructed institutions. In both cases, she provided a critical perspective toward every woman’s freedom to choose. In the case of Compulsory Heterosexuality, for example, she presented the notion of Lesbian Continuum as an alternative way of thinking about the variety of relationships between women. Both in her poetry and her non-fiction writing, the honestly spoke of taboos, like that of motherhood. In her book “Of Woman Born”, she points out to the difference between motherhood as an experience and an imposed political institution. Her mother was a concert pianist who put her career aside to raise her family, while her father developed his career as an academic. Rich embodied the feeling that she was the benefactor of her mother’s sacrifice. When awarded the 1973 National Book Award, she declared that she accepted it on behalf of all women and shared it with her fellow nominees, Alice Walker and Audre Lorde. In 1997 she refused the National Medal of Arts, she did so to express her critique of the Clinton administration. Her famous quote from the refusal letter stated: “art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage”. By her thirties, she was married and had three children. After her husband’s suicide, she had a relationship with novelist and poet Michelle Cliff. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Agatha Christie WWP
Literature & Poetry

Agatha Christie, 1890-1976

English author and playwright. Known as the Queen of Mystery for her detective novels.

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, England, into a middle-class family. In her early years, she was homeschooled by her parents and taught herself to read at the age of five, against her mother’s wish. In 1901, at 10, she wrote her first poem, “The Cow Slip.” That same year, her father died, and not long after, her mother remarried, and the family moved to Cheadle, Cheshire. She began to receive formal education at Miss Guyer’s Girls’ School but had trouble adjusting to the strict environment. At 15, she was sent to a boarding school in Paris, where she mainly had piano lessons and vocal training. Following her return to England, she began writing short stories reflecting her interest in spiritualism and the paranormal. These include The Call of Wings, and The House of Beauty, later published as The House of Dreams. In addition, she began working on her first novel, Snow Upon the Desert, which she tried to publish under a pseudonym but got rejected by six different publishers. In 1912, at 22, she began a relationship with a military officer named Archie Christie. At the outbreak of World War I, he was sent to fight in France, and the couple had to wait for his home leave to get married. During the war, she volunteered as a nurse at the Voluntary Aid Detachment of the Red Cross. There, she met many Belgian soldiers, which inspired her to create the character of Hercule Poirot – a former Belgian police officer “with a magnificent mustache.” He appeared in Christie’s first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, as the distinguished detective and later in 25 more novels and numerous short stories. That first novel was written in 1916 but was published only in 1920 after Christie signed a six books contract with The Bodley Head publication. After the war, Christie and her husband moved to London, and in 1919 she gave birth to her daughter Rosalind. She continued to write thrillers and murder mystery stories, developing new detective characters, such as Tommy and Tuppence in The Secret Adversary and Miss Jane Marple in the short story collection The Thirteen Problems. In 1926, she published The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which was an immediate best-seller, and years later was voted the best crime novel ever by the British Crime Writers’ Association. Despite her literary success, she dealt with personal issues. First, her mother died, and then her husband filed for divorce after falling in love with another woman. On December 3rd, 1926, following a fight with her husband, Christie left the house without saying where she was going. The next morning, her car was found abandoned, and the mysterious disappearance of the author became a news sensation. Thousand police officers and 15,000 volunteers searched for her. The author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, gave a medium one of Christie’s gloves to locate her, and a newspaper offered a £100 reward to the person who would find her. Eleven days later, Christie got recognized in a hotel in Yorkshire, where she registered under the last name of her husband’s lover. She suffered from amnesia and couldn’t recall who she was or how she got to Yorkshire. After the incident, she moved to London with her daughter, received psychiatric treatment, and divorced. In 1928, at 38, she took the Orient Express to Istanbul and then continued to Baghdad. While visiting the archaeological site at Ur, she befriended the archaeologist Leonard Woolley, who invited her back the following year. Then, she met the archaeologist Max Mallowan, 13 years her junior. After they married, she joined him on his archaeological expeditions in the Middle East, which inspired many of her stories, such as the 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express. She continued to publish more novels and short stories, and in 1943, after she disliked a stage adaption of one of her novels, she began to adapt her stories into plays. In the early 1970s, her health began to decline. She published her last novel in 1973 and made her last public appearance in 1974. She died two years later at the age of 85. During her life, she wrote 74 novels (66 of them are detective stories), 14 short-stories collections, 19 plays, and an autobiography. Dozens of her works got adapted into films, TV series, and stage plays. Her books have been translated into over 100 languages and sold over 300 million copies worldwide. In 1976, at the time of her death, she was the best-selling novelist in history. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Alice-Dunbar-Nelson-WWP
Literature & Poetry

Alice Dunbar Nelson, 1875-1935

A poet, journalist, playwright, and political activist. Associated with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Alice Ruth Moore was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of a Creole seaman and a former enslaved black seamstress. After graduating high school at 14, she attended a teacher-training program at Straight University, and at 17, she began teaching at an Elementary school in New Orleans. She became involved with activism at the Phyllis Wheatley Club and wrote for the Woman’s Era Club newspaper – the first newspaper created for and by African American women. In 1895, she published her first collection of poems, essays, and short stories titled “Violets and Other Tales.” That same year she moved to NYC, where she helped establish the White Rose Mission – a settlement house for colored girls. Furthering her education, she took courses at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Her writings for the Woman’s Era newspaper caught the attention of the poet and journalist Paul Laurence Dunbar, and in 1898, after two years of correspondence, she moved to live with him in Washington, DC, and they got married. Their relationship fertile their writing but was also disruptive and abusive. He raped her before they got married, and after three years of violent behavior, she left him and moved to Wilmington, Delaware. There, Dunbar taught at various institutes, including Howard High School, the Hampton Institute, and the State College for Colored Students. She never stopped studying, and at 32, she received her M.S degree from Cornell University. In 1913, Dunbar worked as the co-editor and writer for the A.M.E. Review – the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s newspaper. She met poet and civil rights activist Robert J. Nelson, and they got married in 1916. Although she was always involved in political activism, supporting the women’s rights movement and working toward the empowerment of women of color, it was only in 1918 that Dunbar-Nelson was appointed to an official role in the movement as a representative of the Woman’s Committee of the Council of Defense. In 1920, she became the co-editor of the progressive black newspaper, the “Wilmington Advocate.” In that same year, she published a literary anthology, aiming at black readers, titled “The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer.” At 45, Dunbar-Nelson was a successful and popular writer, consistently publishing articles, columns, and essays in newspapers as well as in academic journals. Dunbar-Nelson became a speaker at various events, including the 1928 American Negro Labor Congress Forum in Philadelphia. After she moved with her husband to Philadelphia in 1932, her health declined, and two years later, she passed away at the age of 60. Dunbar-Nelson is a representative of the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Her writing is characterized by complex understandings of race, gender, and ethnicity. In her work, Dunbar-Nelson explored issues that she dealt with as a woman of color, especially her mixed-raced experiences, not belonging here or there. She wrote about her perspective of education opportunity, workplace environment, and social oppression, inspiring generations of black writers to come. Share:This post is also available in: Español Read more...
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