Across the Miles: Tales of Correspondence

by L.M. Montgomery

In L.M. Montgomery’s world, receiving a letter was an important event. Letters, before the advent of the telephone, were the sole means of communication between people who lived at a distance from each other. Letter-writing was a cultivated skill, honed by another nineteenth-century pastime, keeping a journal. The twenty stories in Across the Miles bear witness to the importance these writing forms played in ordinary people’s lives, as they corresponded with loved ones and expressed themselves through their journals.

As usual, Montgomery’s cast of characters ranges widely, from the poor but ambitious student Grace Seeley, to the rich but lonely Isobel Shirley, from the “unholy imp” Link Houseman to the country doctor Jack Willoughby and his millionaire rival Gus Sinclair. Her tales may be set on her beloved Prince Edward Island or the western prairies, in a humble cottage or a society mansion; her tone may be serious or playful; her characters may be caught up in whirlwind love affairs or the more prosaic business of everyday life. But always the stories in Across the Miles bring us back to a world we feel we have lost, a world of old-fashioned values and concerns, a world we enter gladly, sure that we will find people, places, and plots to amuse charm and move us.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Fiction, Young Adult, Historical Fiction, Romance, Canada

280 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Lucy Maud Montgomery was a Canadian author whose novels, stories, essays and poems made her one of the most widely read writers in Canadian literary history. Publishing under the name L. M. Montgomery, she achieved international recognition with the novel Anne of Green Gables, released in 1908, which quickly became a bestseller and introduced readers to the imaginative orphan Anne Shirley. The success of the book transformed Montgomery from a schoolteacher and magazine contributor into a celebrated literary figure whose work reached audiences far beyond Canada. Raised on Prince Edward Island, she drew deeply on its landscapes, rural communities, and storytelling traditions, turning the island into the setting for many of her novels. The popularity of Anne of Green Gables led to numerous sequels, including Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island, establishing a beloved series that followed Anne from childhood to adulthood. Montgomery continued to write steadily throughout her life, producing twenty novels and more than a thousand short stories poems and essays. Her fiction often centered on young women, personal growth, and the emotional ties between people and place, combining gentle humor with reflections on memory, imagination, and belonging. Although she enjoyed enormous popularity, Montgomery also faced personal difficulties, including long periods of depression and the strain of caring for her husband, a Presbyterian minister who struggled with mental illness. Writing became both a profession and a refuge, allowing her to transform memories of childhood and observation of everyday life into vivid storytelling. In addition to the Anne series, she created other notable works, including the Emily novels and several stand alone stories that explored identity, creativity, and attachment to home. Her books were translated widely and attracted devoted readers around the world, helping shape the international image of Prince Edward Island as a place of pastoral beauty and warm community life. Scholars later studied her extensive journals letters and manuscripts, which revealed the complex inner life behind the cheerful tone of many of her books. By the time of her death in 1942, Montgomery had become one of the most successful and influential authors in Canadian literature. Her stories about imagination, resilience, and the search for belonging continue to inspire readers of all ages, and Anne Shirley remains one of the most recognizable characters in children's fiction. Through generations of readers, Montgomery's work has encouraged appreciation for storytelling, nature, and the emotional richness of ordinary life. Her legacy also includes a vast body of diaries and correspondence that document the challenges faced by a professional woman writer in the early twentieth century. Institutions such as the L. M. Montgomery Institute have continued to examine her influence on literature culture and tourism, particularly on Prince Edward Island, where sites associated with her fiction attract visitors from many countries. Adaptations of Anne of Green Gables for film, television, and theatre have introduced new audiences to her stories, ensuring that her characters remain part of global popular culture. Though critical opinion once dismissed her as merely a writer for children, later scholarship recognized the depth of her themes and the enduring craft of her storytelling. Today she is remembered as a central figure in Canadian literature whose imaginative vision gave voice to the beauty of rural life while celebrating the hopes of young dreamers who search for belonging.

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a truly delightful collection! I genuinely enjoyed every story. Thank you, Libby, for such a good choice and for our daily chats. A highlight of September!

Here are some of my favorite stories:

-Aunt Caroline’s Silk Dress
-The Old Fellow’s Letter
-At Five O’Clock in the Morning
-The Girl and the Photograph
-The Jest That Failed
-The Revolt of Mary Isabel

[Manybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unless you are actually a serious romance as a reading genre fan and thus would generally appreciate and even much personally enjoy perusing letter-based short stories that for the vast majority of the inclusions have love, match making and many schoolgirl or schoolboy like crushes as their main themes, I personally would probably only suggest L.M. Montgomery's Across the Miles for serious Montgomery fans and completists. For while the compiled short anecdotes of correspondence (part of the late Rea Wilmshurst's series of thematically linked and edited L.M. Montgomery short stories) are indeed interesting and do very much show how in bygone times, how before especially the advent of the telephone, letters and letter writing were in fact the main and often the only way of corresponding, of reaching out across the miles so to speak, or even across a city or a street if one could not simply go and knock on an individual's door in person, I for one have only really and without qualms and reservations enjoyed about six of the twenty presented letter and note writing tales presented in Across the Miles.

And truth be told, NONE of the six stories I have in fact truly enjoyed reading in Across the Miles actually do involve love letters, but rather they feature other forms and instances of penned correspondences, such as invitations, promissory notes, misunderstandings, a nasty jest that ends up miserably failing, and a really ingenious and funny anecdote of how an estranged family is brought back together by means of two lonely siblings and their runaway kite. And the fourteen other collected tales of Across the Miles, while most definitely readable enough and I guess also enjoyable for what they are, yes, due to the fact that most of them are indeed stories of love letters, often also of match making, and since I have always rather despised stories featuring the latter (see above), well, I have found these tales generally rather trite, tedious, repetitive and generally so gratingly annoying on a personal reading pleasure level that I really cannot consider Across the Miles with more than three very and overly generous stars. For indeed, a collection of short stories, even by one of my all time favourite authors, which out of twenty tales, only leaves six that are truly enjoyable and engaging for me, that really is not enough for a four star rating by any stretch of my imagination (although I do still warmly and much recommend Across the Miles for those L.M. Montgomery fans who actually tend to enjoy her love and matchmaking stories, and do and will always consider Rea Wilmshurst's thematic collections of Montgomery's short stories as brilliant, with especially her eruditely analytical introductions and presented source materials being an appreciated added academic study and research bonus, although I also have to always leave the necessary caveat to read Wilmshurst's introductions after having read the stories since they always contain a lot of spoilers).

[Kailey (Luminous Libro) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love revisiting these short stories by one of my favorite authors. They are so wholesome and sweet!

[Elinor Loredan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Contrary to my first review, I now consider this one of my top favorites of Montgomery's short story collections. Each story is charming and touching. The ones composed of journal entries particularly appeal to me. I also especially appreciate The Schoolmaster's Letters, in which Montgomery actually shows what the schoolmaster writes rather than simply summarizing it. The descriptions of nature and his love are exquisite.

I noticed this time around, also, that in several of the stories characters experience blessings because they chose to be a blessing to someone else despite reluctance to do so. We should not do good deeds in order to receive something in return, but Montgomery reminds us generosity is indeed often rewarded.

***
I don't love this as much as I thought I would, but I still love it :). I especially enjoyed the stories in diary format, because they reveal intimacies of the characters that wouldn't be there with a third person narrator.

My favorite stories in this collection are...

Cyrilla's Inspiration (but I want to know what the girls wrote in their letters!)

At Five O'Clock in the Morning (I like this one better the second time, particularly the dialogue between Dora and Murray.)

The Letters

A Fortunate Mistake

The Growing Up of Cornelia (this one in particular-I love Cornelia's voice, Sidney, the woods they ramble in, the romance...)

A Millionaire's Proposal (dear Jack!)

[Rikke · Rating 3 out of 5]

The art of letter-writing.

Perhaps a lost art form these days. But once a necessity; a vital part of life. The ability to express oneself on paper were a gateway to the world, connecting relatives, creating opportunities and simply catching up.

This story collection contains a collection of Montgomery's short stories that all revolve around letter-writing, journaling – or perhaps finding long-lost letters and notes, ultimately changing lives. And it's quite fun too read; certainly very romantic and tenderhearted.

The love stories dominate the collection and while they can be a bit too repetitive, I found myself smiling; touched by a story of a young girl receiving a fake prom invitation and having the night of her life; of a girl pretending to be someone she wasn't only to find out she was the right one all along; or perhaps the tale of a misplaced love-letter bringing joy to an older woman.

Reading Montgomery is such a heartwarming experience. This was no exception.

[Maria Elmvang · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is my favourite of LMM's short story collections. It's all about letters, diaries or other 'written things' being the main part of the story. I love reading books made up of letters or diaries, so this is right up my alley :) Also, there are a lot of really sweet and romantic stories in there as well.

[Elinor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read and reread all of the Montgomery novels numerous times, but I had never gotten around to her collected short stories. I picked this paperback up in a thrift store and I've been reading one story at bedtime for several weeks. I don't really care for the short story genre no matter how well done, although the Montgomery magic is apparent in every one of these Tales of Correspondence. The drawback was that every story involved a letter -- a lost letter, a love letter, a letter sent to the wrong recipient -- and after a while, this theme became somewhat repetitious. I would suggest these short story collections are for hard-core LMM fans only.

[The Story Girl · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fun and cozy collection of short stories. Probably one of my favorite collections by LMM because it focused more on adults and romance. I did miss her descriptions of nature though.

Now I only have two more short story collections by her, it looks like, before I've read her entire body of work! (At least when it comes to fiction)

[JG (Introverted Reader) · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories are primarily ones that never saw the light of day after being published in magazines in Montgomery's lifetime. There's a reason for that. I love reading more my L.M. Montgomery, but these are not my favorites. Maybe because they're grouped together by theme? The stories get very repetitive. And some of the stories showed up as scenes in her books. Fans of Montgomery should read these, but don't pick this up expecting to fall in love with it.

[Alyssa DeLeon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely little collection of pure LMM gold. I was hesitant to read this, as I am not a huge fan of "letter" style stories, but this turned out to be every bit as wonderful as her other short stories. A wonderful line from the story "The Revolt of Mary Isabel"... "Mary Isabel's conscience would not let the doctor say anything uncomplimentary of Louisa, and the doctor's conscience would not let him say anything complimentary."

[Justine Olawsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought I had read all of the L.M. Montgomery short story collections that were compiled and edited by Rea Wilmshurst in the 1980's. I was wrong. I came across this collection at Half Price Books and snatched it up like a baby bird. You see, I am in the midst of reading a very long, very dense, very thrilling, but very challenging book on neuropsychology (yep, that's right!), and I just wanted to read some mental balm. Lucy Maud is a very soothing writer, and this collection helped me feel rested enough to swing back into the brain book with all synapses firing.

I love L.M. Montgomery's work. There is nothing really new or revolutionary in any of these stories. They are just gentle and heartfelt and sincere -- which is a breath of fresh air in a world grown far too harsh and cynical and flippant. There is nothing too much more to say about them; even now, the whole lot of them is fading back into the recesses of my mind -- becoming a mulch of goodness, beauty, and truth on which to sow the seeds of thought before they turn into the weeds of despair. She can turn my whole way of seeing the world upside down, which is a good thing.

[Kate H · Rating 4 out of 5]

L.M. Montgomery is a long time and all time favorite author of mine. She writes the perfect girls story with just the right mix of adventure, drama and happiness. I find her books a comfort to read and have re-read most of her works many times over the years. They are classics for a reason and that reason is they are great. These are true comfort books for me and books I enjoy re-reading again and again.

[Kris Dersch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this might be my favorite of the short story collections of hers that I've read (which isn't all of them,) with the possible exception of Akin to Anne. Some of them because of the themes they are divided into start to feel very the same after awhile. This one had some similarities but no story felt like a duplicate. It's fun to read these as someone who knows her work and watch how she developed as a writer.

[Bethaney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every spring, I get a hankering for LM Montgomery. As I mentioned in another review, these short story collections (thank you Rea Wilmshurst!) gave me a chance to read when I didn’t have the time to dig into a full length book.

This collection is fun and typical Montgomery fare. I re-read them every few years.

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Think of this collection as written sketches. For fans of L.M. Montgomery who want to read everything she wrote.
The stories often feel incomplete and I can see where later works emerged (hence calling them sketches).

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent short stories, especially helpful if you're a busy mom: easy to pick up an dput down.

[Samantha Penrose · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely adored this book.
I do not find it childish at all. Old fashioned, yes, but passionate and charming, nonetheless.
I would definitely recommend this to fans of the Anne series

[Brian Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love short stories and these are some of the best.

[Aimee · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. There were some very good stories in here and a few not so good ones, but I enjoyed them all. I especially loved that they all used letter-writing as a focal point. What I admire about L.M. Montgomery, that the editor pointed out in her afterward, is that a lot of her stories do have a similar vibe and outline to them but she is able to make each one slightly different and stand out in its own way. These were great stories to read before bed - put you in a good mood!

[Stephanie Ricker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet, light, and just what I needed during the endless election week. The stories are uncomplicated and not particularly life-changing, but they were lovely and comforting. I enjoyed the afterword, which described how the editor came to find hundreds (!) of L.M. Montgomery stories. Montgomery was astonishingly prolific, and she had to be since that was how she made her living.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of short stories all around the theme of letters: sent or received. In some cases, it is journal entries. The nice thing about short stories is that you can pick up and put down without having to follow a thread of an entire novel. In some cases, the short story format works well; in others, it seems to need more.

[Brenton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my favourite of the Montgomery short story collection thus far, particularly because I like epistolary fiction. The "Afterword" by editor Rea Wilmhurst is a treat. For me, these short story collections are best read a story a week rather than one a day, since there are some repetitions of themes.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read this before, but felt like rereading after I got done with "Marilla of Green Gables." It's always nice to return to these comforting stories. The theme of this series of stories is that a lot of the connections happen through letter writing. It's an interesting format since people don't really write letters anymore.

[Julie Zilkie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delight to find a new to me title from my favorite author! These were charming short stories, 12 in all, focusing on letter writing. So glad a friend recommended! Building my LMM collection, slowly but surely.

[Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I quite liked this one, but the best part was actually the narrative by the editor in the back that explains how these edited collections of short stories came to publication. Since I have read nearly all of the L.M. Montgomery published books, this was particularly interesting.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I prefer Montgomery's novels (these were a bit too saccharine for my taste).

[Jennifer Gyuricska · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who are we kidding? I love everything she ever wrote.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the afterword that explains the editorial process of compiling these collections! This is a fun one, as predictable as many of the stories are. LMM is just a delight.

[Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great!

[Kereesa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute, but not my favourite collection.