USA,
30.11.1874 - 24.04.1942
Lucy Maud Montgomery was born on November 30, 1874 in the town of Clifton (now New London). She was two years old when her mother died of tuberculosis. Her father left the girl in the care of her grandparents - her mother's parents who lived in Cavendish - and he moved to the province of Saskatchewan, where he married for the second time.
From the age of six she attended an ordinary rural school, and from nine she began to keep a diary and tried to write poems and short stories. Her poem was first published in the Patriot newspaper in 1891, when she lived for one year in Saskatchewan with her father and stepmother.
In 1894, after graduating from Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, Montgomery received a teaching license. In the following years, she taught at various schools in her native province, and for one year attended the University of Halifax. All these years she wrote a lot: poetry stories, series, which she published in Canadian, American and British magazines.
After her grandfather's death in 1898, she returned to Cavendish to take care of her grandmother. After her grandmother's death in 1911, she married Presbyterian priest Evan MacDonald. Soon after the wedding, the young couple moved to Liskdale, Ontario, where Evan was a priest. They lived there until 1926. Their three sons Chester (1912), Hugh (stillborn 1914) and Stewart (1915) were also born there. Lucy Maud helped her husband in his pastoral activities, was engaged in the household. In 1926, the family moved to Norval, Ontario, and in 1935, after Evans retired, moved to Toronto.
The novella Anya of the Green Mezzanines, based on her childhood impressions, was written in 1905, but several Canadian publishers to whom Montgomery offered her manuscript rejected it. In 1908 the book was published in the United States. The success of the book was immediate and unheard of. After the publication of the first book, the writer received thousands of letters with a request to continue the story of Ani. And then the following works appeared, telling about the fate of Ani-teenage, a girl and, finally, an adult woman (“Anya from Avonleia”, “Anya from Prince Edward Island”, “Anya from Noisy Poplars”, “Anin Dream House”, “Anya from Ingleside”), and other plot-related stories about Avonleia and its inhabitants (“Avonleia Chronicles”, etc.), which met no less enthusiastic reception with the readership. Soon there were stories about other girls: Jane from the Lighthouse, Kilmeny from the Fruit Garden, Emily from the Young Month (according to researchers of her work, the most autobiographical of Montgomery’s books), Pat from the Silver Groves, etc. In total, Montgomery published 20 novels (the action of 19 of them takes place on Prince Edward Island), about 500 short stories and about 500 poems (in newspapers and magazines), 2 collections of stories, one volume of poetry, 3 short biographical essays in the series “Bold Women”, as well as many articles on various topics. Lucy Maud Montgomery died on April 24, 1942.