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Miss the introductory or discussion posts for Volume I? Need the reading schedule for the entire read along? Click through!
Volume II cover years 1910-1921 and picks up with
thirty-five year-old Maud still living in her childhood home caring for her grandmother, as she had for over a decade. Though she was a best selling author, life was very much the same (ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, published in 1908, had already gone into numerous print runs and brought her $7,000 in royalties early in 1910 -- "an enormous figure in a province where the average yearly income for a working woman was less than $300").
Major change was ahead: her grandmother's death (March 1911); marriage to Ewan MacDonald, who had been engaged to Maud since 1906 (July 1911); a European honeymoon; a move to Leaksdale, Ontario, where she set up her first home and stepped into the role of minister's wife; and the birth of her two boys (1912 and 1915 -- Maud lost another son to stillbirth in 1914).
The journal also covers Maud's agony over the first World War, a whirlwind trip to Boston to meet her crafty and not always above board editor with the L. C. Page Company, the discovery of her husband's mental illness, and the further facing of her own.
More and more, her journal became a place of escape, "a secret release for her thoughts," a rich resource for writing material, a source of companionship, "a rich record of motherhood," and an honest glimpse into "the life of a working writer."
I picked up Volume II a few weeks ago and am happily settled back in with Maud. For those of you reading,
I look forward to hearing what you've taken from your readings when we meet for our discussion post on April 29. If you're finding yourself behind schedule, it's no big deal. Read in a way you can enjoy, and if you feel so inclined, come back at a later date to read posts you've missed.
For those of you not reading, it has been wonderful to hear your enthusiasm for and interest in these posts in person, via email, and in comments. I'm glad you're able to get a sense of Maud's life through what's being shared here.
Remember, throughout the month I post quotess on
Twitter (#lmmjournals) and on my
May B. Facebook page. Happy reading, and please spread the word!
The work for which we are fitted -- which we are sent into this world to do -- what a blessing it is and what fulness of joy it holds!
-- Lucy Maud Montgomery, May 23, 1910
There will be two concurrent features on the blog next month. We will continue with The Lucy Maud Montgomery Journals Read Along, with the introductory post running April 1 and the discussion post April 29. We'll take off the month of May and resume reading Volume III in June.
If you're interested in learning more, click through to the idea behind the read along and the reading schedule.
The rest of April will be devoted to National Poetry Month. There will be a variety of posts from poets, authors, readers, and teachers talking about their experiences with poetry. And there will be a really fun giveaway. More on all this in the days to come.
Here's a Lucy Maud Montgomery quote that nicely ties the month together:
I love best the poets who hurt me -- who offer me the roses of their thoughts with the sharp thorn among them, piercing to the bone and marrow. When in reading a poem I come across some line or couplet that thrusts itself into my heart with a stab of deadly pain -- then is my soul knit unto the soul of that poet forevermore. Browning hurts me worse than any poet I have ever read -- and so I love him most.
3/21/1901
I have written two poems this week. A year ago I could not have written them, but now they came easily and naturally. This encourages me. Perhaps in the future I can achieve something worth while. I never expect to be famous--I don't want to be, really, often as I've dreamed of it. But I do want to have a recognized place among good workers in my chosen profession. That, I honestly believe, is happiness and harder to win the sweeter and more lasting when won.
I really think that I possess the saving grace of perseverance. What failures and discouragements I used to meet at first when, in my teens, I sent out my wretched little manuscripts--for they were wretched, although I thought them quite fine--with an audacity I wonder at now. I cannot remember the time when I did not mean to be a writer 'when I grew up'. I has always been my central purpose around which every hope and effort and ambition of my life has grouped itself.
...The moment we see our first darling brain child arrayed in black type is never to be forgotten. It must have in it, I think, some of the wonderful awe and delight that comes to a mother when she looks for the first time on the face of her first born.
8/16/1907
It [ANNE OF GREEN GABLES] was a labor of love. Nothing I have ever written gave me so much pleasure to write. I cast “moral” and “Sunday School” ideals to the winds and made my “Anne” a real human girl... . There is plenty of incident in it but after all it must stand or fall by “Anne”. She is the book.
... I wrote it for love, not money -- but very often such books are the most successful...
10/15/1908
It seems that Anne is a big success. It is a “best seller” and is in its fifth edition -- I cannot realize this. My strongest feeling seems to be incredulity. I can’t believe that such a simple little tale, written in and of a simple P.E.I. farming settlement, with a juvenile audience in view, can really have scored out in the busy world. I have had so many nice letter about it -- and no end of reviews. Most of them were very flattering. Three or four had a rather contemptuous tone and three were really nasty.
One of the reviews says “the book radiates happiness and optimism.” When I think of the conditions of worry and gloom and care under which it was written I wonder at this. Thank God, I can keep the shadows of my life out of my work. I would not wish to darken any other life -- I want instead to be a messenger of optimism and sunshine.
1/17/1895
I am so crazy about reading that I can’t let a book drop until I see its end, even if it is as dull as a cookery recipe.
7/10/1898
I have written a good deal since coming home and am slowly but I think surely, climbing up the ladder. I think my recent work is much better than any I have yet done. I study hard and struggle to improve.
12/31/1898
How I love my work. I seem to grow more and more wrapped up in it as the days pass and other hopes and interests fail me. Nearly everything I think or do or say is subordinated to a desire to improve my work. I study people and events for that, I think and speculate and read for that.
4/4/1899
I have no doubt that it is a wise ordinance of fate -- or Providence? -- that I cannot get all the books I want or I should certainly never accomplish much. I am simply a “book drunkard.” Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.
5/1/1899
Dear old world, you are very beautiful and I love you well.
5/1/1900
Oh, as long as we can work we can make life beautiful! And life is beautiful in spite of all its sorrow and care.
5/1/1900
I also re-read “King Solomon’s Mines” lately. I always liked it because it was so full of adventure and I do love that with a love that has outlived childhood. What care I if it be “wild and improbable” and “lacking in literary art”? I refuse to be any longer hampered in my likes and dislikes by such cannons of criticism. The one essential thing I demand of a book is that it should interest me. If it does, I forgive it any every other fault.
If you missed the first part of the discussion, be sure to click through here.
The Two Selves:
From early on, Maud wrote of feeling like an outsider at school and at home. She was raised by her grandparents, who having already raised their children, were not interested in indulging a spirited, curious, social child. At school, where she was often at the top of her class, she felt separate from her classmates intellectually. Though loved by her grandparents and extended family, they found her book love and imagination both strange and obsessive. As a result, Maud learned to keep her true nature largely to herself. There are certainly parallels between her life and her characters, Anne and Emily, to be sure.
I have grown years older in this past month. Grief and worry and heartbreak have done their work thoroughly. Sometimes I ask myself if the pale, sad-eyed woman I see in my glass can really be the merry girl of olden days or if she be some altogether new creature, born of sorrow and baptized of suffering, who is the sister and companion of regret and hopeless longing.
Before taking her third school (1897-1898), Maud became engaged to Edwin Simpson, a decision she immediately regretted that threw her into months of turmoil. At the same time she started a secret relationship with her landlord’s son, Herman Leard. This portion of her life was a turning point, where her two selves became -- and continued -- to be more separate than they ever had been before.
The pressure she felt, both real and (possibly) imagined, to keep a calm external life continued to dog her for the rest of her life. In the years she cared for her grandmother, she was often lonely, stifled by the old woman’s set habits (which included heating only the kitchen through terrible winters), and overwhelmed by depression that often abated in warmer months but could attack at any time without any warning.
It was difficult for me to read of her depression this time through, knowing things would only become darker. As she corresponded with her fiancee and future husband, Ewan MacDonald, she was distressed to read of his own mental and emotional anguish, something that played a huge role in their future marriage and his future calling as a minister.
The Journal:
Maud often described her journal as a place to record and make sense of things (a place to “write it out”) and a “grumble book” -- somewhere she could honestly, privately share her frustrations and woe. As an occasional journaler, I can relate to both of these and often wonder, as Maud sometimes expressed, of the skewed picture such a journal paints. How much of the true person can be known when a journal is used this way?
As readers will discover in future volumes, Maud made considerable effort to re-copy and organize older entries, transferring all volumes into the same standard blank books she was to keep for the rest of her life. While there is the possibility cuts were made in the process, she let the honest, the unflattering, the heartbreaking, the sometimes unkind entries stand. She allowed, I think, as much honestly into her records as a person can bring.
Things to consider as we continue reading volumes II-V:
- At what point did Maud decide she was writing for an audience and not just herself?
- Did she knowingly edit as she wrote, softening or omitting things?
- How much honesty and transparency is a person capable of in recording a life?
- In regard to her depression: do you think there were ways she could have asked for help with those she trusted or was the taboo of mental illness too strong?
- Would her books have changed if her life were different?
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By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 2/25/2013
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An Overview:
This first volume of Maud’s journals covers her life from ages fourteen through thirty-five. She starts as a school girl (not above school yard spats and secret indulgences in novels during lesson time); studies at Prince of Wales College and Dalhousie University; teaches three years in different communities in Prince Edward Island, works one year as a copyeditor at a Nova Scotia newspaper; experiences six* proposals, two engagements, and one secret love affair; and spends more than a decade as her grandmother’s companion and caretaker, all the while reading, writing, and dreaming of the literary life.
There are countless directions I could take this post, but for the sake of true discussion, I wanted to comment on a few things that struck me and raise questions to those of you who have also read. You’ll see I’ve had so much to say I’ve decided to run a second discussion post on Wednesday and a more quotes I found interesting on Friday. I invite readers to take us anywhere you’d like in the comments below.
The Literary Life:
All my life is has been my aim to write a book -- a “real live” book... Well, I’ve written my book. The dream dreamed years ago in that old brown desk in school has come true at last after years of toil and struggle. And the realization is sweet -- almost as sweet as the dream!
Maud’s first novel, ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, sold to L.C. Page and Co., the fifth publishing house she submitted to. While on the surface, this looks like an easy thing, she had been tirelessly writing, submitting, and selling short stories and poems for over fifteen years. Writing had become a daily part of her life, as had a faithful study of the magazine market.
Blessings be on the inventors of the alphabet, pen and printing press! Life would be -- to me in all events -- a terrible thing without books.
As well as writing, Maud read broadly and deeply. She often re-read childhood favorites, studying to see if they held up as the years passed but also refusing to let popular opinion sway her preferences. She compared author’s newer works to their older titles, pursued the bestsellers and the classics, and collected phrases that spoke to her (reminding me of my commonplace book).
After selling ANNE in 1907, she quickly went on to sell the sequel, ANNE OF AVONLEA, KILMENY OF THE ORCHARD (a story re-worked story that had previously run as a magazine serial), and THE STORY GIRL (her personal favorite).
The road of literature is at first a very slow one...and I mean to work patiently on until I win -- as I believe I shall, sooner or later -- recognition and success.
Wednesday's discussion will focus on the two lives Maud often felt she lived and the process of recording a life through journaling.
*Have I forgotten someone or accidentally added someone else in? Mr. Mustard, Lem, Lou, Edwin, Ewan, Oliver.
As I've been reading Volume I of Lucy Maud Montgomery's journals, I've been underlining quotes that I've found especially interesting, insightful, and fun. I've been sharing them on Facebook and Twitter but realized readers here might like to read them, too. Here's a glimpse into Maud's thoughts from ages fourteen to twenty. Be sure to return Monday, 25 February to discuss Volume I!
12/2/1889
Miss Gordon looked rather blank. I think she had been expecting to hear that Nate and I broke all the ten commandments all at once every day.
3/4/1890
I thought Jack was killed but when he picked himself up with a real live “cuss word” I concluded he wasn’t. But his face was all spattered with soot and he did look so funny.
10/20/1890
(Very Anne-ish): Today I got a letter from home with some pressed flowers in it. It just seemed as if they spoke to me and whispered a lovely message of a far-off land where blue skies are bending over maple-crimsoned hills and spruce glens are still green and dim in their balsamic recesses.
6/6/1891
Mustard a minister!! Oh Lordy--how it will sound--Rev. Mr. Mustard.
10/4/1891
I must have some duck in my composition for I always love to be out in a rainstorm.
9/1/1892
Grandpa stayed home to look after us all. He told the boys that they could fight the whole evening, if they wanted to. ...Well and Dave were black and blue for a week but they had had the time of their lives. I’m sure they wished Grace Macneill could have got married nightly.
1/12/1983
Books are a delightful world in themselves. Their characters seem as real to me as my friends of actual life.
9/28/1983
Oh, I wonder if I shall ever be able to do anything worth while in the way of writing. It is my dearest ambition.
9/6/1984
I may be teaching my pupils something but they are teaching me more -- whole tomes of wisdom.
9/18/1894
It is a regular fall rain now -- a night wild enough to suit any novelist in search of suitable weather for a murder or elopement.
12/15/1894
Well, my goodness! -- or somebody else’s goodness if mine isn’t substantial enough!
By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 2/1/2013
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Want to know more about the Read Along? Click through for the
introductory post and
reading schedule.
THE SELECTED JOURNALS OF LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY, VOLUME I (1889-1910)
It is will great excitement I welcome you to the LMM Journals Read Along! Picking up this first book has, in many ways, felt like coming home. If you are an Anne fan, you will be delighted to see phrases and circumstances that feel very Anne-ish. If you're an Emily fan, you'll see parallels between Maud's upbringing and Emily's.
Here you'll find school girl spats, small-town social events, a year with her beloved father (and ill-humored stepmother), a proposal from her former teacher (!), many, many heart-broken suitors, teaching, writing, an engagement, loneliness, the sale of ANNE.
Lucy Maud Montgomery was born November 30, 1874 in Clifton (now New London), Prince Edward Island, Canada. "Thirty-four years later, in 1908, her first novel, ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, put Prince Edward Island on the literary map of the world. When she died in 1942 Montgomery had published over twenty books, hundreds of short stories and poems, and her name was known far beyond the English-speaking world."
Before her second birthday, Maud, as she liked to be called, lost her mother. Her father quickly left for the mainland, remarrying and leaving Maud to be raised by her mother's parents. She began journaling as "a tot of nine" but destroyed those early copies. "Surviving are ten handwritten volumes that were begun when she was fourteen and date from 1889 to 1942." This first volume includes the first two of those ten journals, covering her PEI years "from ages 14 to 36" (including a year with her father in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan).
Without siblings, raised by older relatives, and intellectually ahead of her class, Maud often felt isolated and different from those around her. She "viewed her journals as a 'personal confidant in whom I can repose absolute trust'."
"Because the journals are so full and frank and cover such a long period, and because they are the work of a successful professional writer, they provide a degree of information, anecdote, and personal history that makes them unique in Canadian letters. The interest attached to the autobiographical content is obvious. What may not appear so obvious in this first volume is that the complete journals of L. M. Montgomery provide a fund of engrossing social history covering more than half a century and draw the reader surprisingly far into the depths of one woman's life."*
As I read, I'll share favorite quotes on Twitter, using the hashtag #lmmjournals. Make notes as you read or just enjoy. And please consider returning
Monday, 25 February to join the discussion of Volume I.
Be sure to keep a second bookmark at the notes section at the back of the book. Extra details are given here.
Happy reading!
*All quotes taken from the introduction of the first volume
Planning to join the LMM Journal Read Along? Here's what you need to do:
Find the books
Try your public library, or order through your local indie, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble. Now that they're available in paperback, they're more affordable and easier to track down.
Save the dates
Volume I:
introductory post - Friday, February 1
discussion - Monday, February 25
Volume II:
introductory post - Monday, April 1
discussion - Monday, April 29
Volume III:
introductory post - Monday, June 3
discussion - Friday, June 28
Volume IV:
introductory post - Friday, August 2
discussion - Friday, August 30
Volume V:
introductory post - Wednesday, 2 September
discussion - Wednesday, 30 September
Read to share
Jot down anything that sparks your interest and join the discussion! And please spread the word. Twitter hashtag #lmmjournals
By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 12/31/2012
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On Friday I posted about the books I've read in 2012 and mentioned I have only two reading goals for this upcoming year. Both are a result of some soul searching and a longing to nurture my reading life. Curious now? Here they are:
The Lucy Maude Montgomery Journals Read Along:
I first read these journals a decade ago and firmly believe they will be books I re-visit throughout my life. Already a number of you have told me via blog comments, email, or even Christmas card that you plan on reading along. Watch for details in the weeks ahead.
Forgo Goodreads and a public "Currently Reading" list for the year:
I love the opportunity to talk about books.
Goodreads has been a wonderful place to both get recommendations and comment on friends' selections, but this, along with my easily accessible currently reading page, has left me exhausted, friends. I know few of you are so interested in my reading that you check in regularly to see what's going on, but just the thought that I've made this very special aspect of my life so public has drained me considerably. I've talked a bit about this
here and
here.
Part of being an author in the age of social media means maintaining a public persona. I'm finding that while I enjoy this, right now, I'd like to reclaim my reading as something private, something for me only. I will be beholden to no one this upcoming year and am already relishing what this will mean for me as a reader.
I'm an introvert, remember? I crave privacy and am trying to intentionally build it in where I can.
This doesn't mean I won't blog about reading! I can't imagine never talking about books. There will be
On My Nightstand posts, posts that highlight books in various ways, currently reading discussions on my
May B. Facebook page. What you won't get is a blow-by-blow of everything I'm reading. That I'll keep in a
journal I started and have faithfully kept since 2005. I'll continue to read your recommendations over at Goodreads. And I know I'll click over just to see the pretty covers in my own collection. But there will be no new postings there.
What are your reading goals for 2013?
I've slowed my reading pace a bit to fit in other books, but I am loving this second journal. I was laughing aloud last week at her ill-placed meeting with Earl Grey! :)
Ah. The conversation while perched on the privy steps!
My most recent laugh-out-loud moment came from an entry about a house guest / church member who "is a fluent talker and never, even by accident, says a word worth saying or hearing."
I never realized how tough a life she had.
That's a priceless quote - LOL!
I've so enjoyed these posts, Caroline. What a fascinating person Maude is - and yet what a hard life she had. Those were difficult, despairing times during the war and then the millions who died from the Influenza. I also can't even imagine how difficult to cope and deal with mental illness without the knowledge and medicine we have today. Just dealing with an Asperger son without a proper diagnosis for 14 years just about drove me to the loony bin myself.
Glad you're enjoying this, Kim! It's good to know those not reading can glean something.
So much was hush-hush then. Add the stigma of mental illness to small-town gossip and being a minister and a minister's wife -- it was a lot to handle.