Looking for Anne of Green Gables: The Story of L.M. Montgomery and Her Literary Classic

by Irene Gammel

In June 1908, a red-haired orphan appeared on to the streets of Boston and a modern legend was born. That little girl was Anne Shirley, better known as Anne of Green Gables , and her first appearance was in a book that has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide and been translated into more than 35 languages (including Braille). The author who created her was Lucy Maud Montgomery, a writer who revealed very little of herself and her method of crafting a story. On the centenary of its publication, Irene Gammel tells the braided story of both Anne and Maud and, in so doing, shows how a literary classic was born. Montgomery’s own life began in the rural Cavendish family farmhouse on Prince Edward Island, the place that became the inspiration for Green Gables. Mailmen brought the world to the farmhouse’s kitchen door in the form of American mass market periodicals sparking the young Maud’s imagination. From the vantage point of her small world, Montgomery pored over these magazines, gleaning bits of information about how to dress, how to behave and how a proper young lady should grow. She began to write, learning how to craft marketable stories from the magazines’ popular fiction; at the same time the fashion photos inspired her visual imagination. One photo that especially intrigued her was that of a young woman named Evelyn Nesbit, the model for painters and photographers and lover of Stanford White. That photo was the spark for what became Anne Shirley. Blending biography with cultural history, Looking for Anne of Green Gables is a gold mine for fans of the novels and answers a trunk load of Where did Anne get the “e” at the end of her name? How did Montgomery decide to give her red hair? How did Montgomery’s courtship and marriage to Reverend Ewan Macdonald affect the story? Irene Gammel's dual biography of Anne Shirley and the woman who created her will delight the millions who have loved the red haired orphan ever since she took her first step inside the gate of Green Gables farm in Avonlea.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, History, Canada, Biography Memoir, Books About Books, Writing

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Irene Gammel is a literary historian, biographer, and curator. Gammel teaches at Ryerson University in Toronto. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Modern Literature and Culture and is the Director of the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre.

Gammel holds a PhD (1992) and MA (1987) in English from McMaster University, and a Staatsexamen’s degree from the Universität des Saarlandes in Germany. She taught at the University of Prince Edward Island and held Visiting Professorships at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena and Erfurt Universität in Germany. She also served as the President of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association. In 2009, she was elected a member of the Royal Society of Canada.

Reviews

[Dianne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Looking For Anne is the story of how the beloved children's book Anne Of Green Gables was written. The author has searched through Montgomery's personal and family correspondence, court documents, journals and popular publications of the era to piece together Lucy Maud Montgomery's life experiences leading up to and during the writing of her most famous novel and presents it here as the solution to the "mystery" of Anne.

I didn't enjoy this book at all until I was at least three quarters of the way through it. I was very disappointed because I love the Anne books and I wanted so much to enjoy reading how it all came about. Unfortunately, instead of enjoyment I got the uncomfortable feeling Gammel was working very hard to make me dislike Anne.

The overall tone of Looking For Anne is negative and critical. And I found the author making some very big assumptions at times. Writing about Montgomery's mother, who died when Maud was a baby, she says "...neither of the two photos available suggest that she would have possessed the wit or the intelligence that Maud valued in spiritual kin such as her great-aunt Mary, who was a brilliant conversationalist and literary mind." That seems a rather harsh judgment to make from just a couple of photographs. It doesn't come across as reasonable. Then there are scenes where she tells us what Maud was thinking at the time and again, that's not very realistic to me. I was never sure what was fact and what was assumed from circumstantial evidence.

Gammel writes at length in this book about female friendships in Montgomery's era and about those in the book, and has a great deal to suggest about the sexual qualities of those relationships. "Through clever wit and irony, Maud had a gift of bringing her readers tantalizingly close to unspoken feelings of sensuality and sexuality, while ingeniously portraying these feelings as universal and innocent." She says a lot more about Maud's sexuality but I'm not going to go into it here, because it's not Maud's sexuality I have a problem with. I do have a problem when she begins to imply Maud wrote sexual feelings into the children's friendships in the Anne books. These are 11 year old girls. I've never, ever picked up even a hint of that when reading the Anne books and frankly I find it more than a little bit creepy. She suggests strongly that Montgomery was bisexual and perhaps she was, but I will never in a million years believe that we are meant to think the relationship between those little girls is in any way sexual.

Gammel clearly has a taste for the melodramatic. It shows up when she calls Anne of Green Gables "a much more secular and subversive novel" than other novels of the day. And again when she refers several times to Maud Montgomery being a "virtual prisoner" during the years she lived with her aging grandmother; she probably did feel trapped at times, but say it too many times and eyes will roll. Then, when Maud is returning home from a business trip to Boston (the one get-away approved by her grandmother), Gammel, to emphasize the empty life she is going back to after a happy, fun-filled time away, writes "When she arrived at the train station on Prince Edward Island, George Campbell picked her up on the cold and rattling buggy. Sleet blew into her face the whole way home." Overkill? For me, yes.

Another thing that struck me the wrong way was Gammel repeatedly referring to Anne as a pagan. In fact she implies that all lovers of nature are pagan. I looked up the definition of pagan just to be sure I wasn't overreacting and it seems she does mean to say that Maud, Anne and anyone else who loves flowers, brooks and fields are unbelievers, and "unbeliever" is the dictionary's definition, not just mine. Now, I believe in God. But I'm also very fond of growing things, bodies of water and night skies. These things are really not mutually exclusive. I think Gammel is taking way too big a leap here, and when considered together with the leap taken from friendship to sexual feelings, and her tendency toward melodrama, this author loses pretty much all credibility with me.

As I said earlier I didn't like it at all till close to the end, and the reason for my interest at that point was that she might say other outrageous things I wouldn't want to miss. Or maybe she'd somehow make all the other stuff make sense. And, this was our book club selection for March and I didn't want to miss anything. So I read through to the end, and now, truthfully, I sort of wish I'd never read it at all

[Manybooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

With her Looking For Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic (and which is obviously meant to coincide with the 2008 centenary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables) Ryerson (and after the recent name change Toronto Metropolitan University) professor Irene Gammel focuses primarily on the writing process of Anne of Green Gables, as she, as Gammel with thorough research and a plethora of featured historical, cultural, social and literary information meticulously explores in Looking For Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic the many influences that guided and inspired Maud in creating, in writing about impetuous, imaginative and universally beloved Anne Shirley. And yes, by combining detailed excerpts from Montgomery’s published private journals (as well as photos and personal letters) with sections of original prose, Gammel in Looking For Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic not only writes about Maud as a researcher, as a scholar showing and enlightening, instructing her readers but is actually also casting Lucy Maud Montgomery quasi as a character in her own biography, with Irene Gammel's unique blending of research and descriptive passages, also and happily making what could easily be and become very dry (and as such also tedious) material generally nicely engaging and readable, approachable to not only academics, to scholars but also to general readers as well (well, at least in my humble opinion, since both my academic reading self with a PhD in German literature and also my inner teenaged reader just interested in Anne of Green Gables as a story and how this tale textually develops under and from Montgomery's pen have found and do find Looking For Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic delightful and also for the most part delightfully easy reading and therefore never convoluted or with annoying analyses and problematic author takes and attitudes).

But since Irene Gammel does show in Looking For Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic how even the most mundane and minute events and details in Montgomery’s life (as well as those of her family, friends and neighbours) often seem to have majorly influenced the emerging text of Anne of Green Gables, I also rather understand and accept that some readers (and reviewers) have seemingly kind of gotten a bit textually bogged down (at times) regarding Looking For Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic (and that sometimes storylines tend to feel like they are being dropped by Gammel in favour of lists of historical facts and a bit of an exaggerated academic thoroughness), something that has not at all bothered me, but I can certainly see (and understand) how this might disrupt the textual flow for others. And as such, while personally and academically speaking, my reading experience for Looking For Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic has been pretty solidly five stars, and that I do think that Looking For Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic is generally really nicely accessible and in particular so for an academic book, I also am not at all surprised that Looking For Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic also has its shares of naysayers so to speak and has not had universally positive, glowing reviews and high star ratings.

[Jeanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was really fascinated with this book about L.M. Montgomery and the creation of Anne Shirley, one of literatures most beloved heroines. After reading this book I was not at all surprised to read the recent news article written about L.M. Montgomery's suicide. A quote from the article, written by Montgomery's granddaughter, "Despite her great success, it is known that she suffered from depression, that she was isolated, sad and filled with worry and dread for much of her life. But our family has never spoken publicly about the extent of her illness.What has never been revealed is that L.M. Montgomery took her own life at the age of 67 through a drug overdose."

Irene Gammel delved into contemporary source material from Montgomery's life so that she could discover the origins of Anne. Magazines that Montgomery read and published in, unpublished letters and journal entires of Montgomery's, as well as pictures and photographs, books and articles from the years surrounding Anne's creation were all used to uncover the mystery. Gammel herself stated in the prologue that "telling the life of Anne is like peeling an onion. This book takes readers inside Maud's guarded life not only by reading between the lines of her unpublished journal entires for the period, but also by looking beyond the conventional sources that Maud wanted us to see." While Montgomery was an addictive diarist and note taker and loved reading old diary entries, letting them influence her present, she destroyed much of her letters, notebooks and journals. What we are left with today is only what she wanted to survive.
One thing that surprised me and that I think might surprise many of Montgomery's fans is that she was very pragmatic about her writing career. She wanted to make money, be self-sufficient and famous. She wasn't fueled by imagination like the character she created was. Montgomery read extensively from popular publications so she would know what kind of stories could get published and then she would mimic the formulas. The story of Anne is far from being an original idea. It was a formula story that sold well and was very popular at the time, even down to the red hair and the name Anne. Montgomery was very pragmatic in her creation of Anne. It seems much of the story was not drawn from her imagination but taken from real life situations and magazine articles.

What was most revealing to me however, was how self-involved Montgomery was, how much of a "woe is me" attitude she had and how she felt a need to denigrate and bring down other people. That attitude arose from how utterly insecure she was. One example of this is that she kept a mental blacklist of everyone who failed to congratulate her on the success of Anne of Green Gables. "A sign of narcissistic self-involvement, it was also a mark of deep-seated insecurity and a lifelong desire for praise and acceptance. Nate Lockhart, with whom she had first shared her desire to write a book, never congratulated her on her novel, she complained. One wonders whether she congratulated him on the birth of two sons, both in the same year as Anne." (236)

The best part of this book is going along with Gammel as she uncovers so much of what influenced L.M. Montgomery in creating Anne of Green Gables. "Anne was the product of a long evolution. In fact, just as Maud would distill her winter potpourri from the blossoms of an entire summer, so she distilled Anne's character from a variety of "Anns" while also blending that distillation with her own nostalgic memories. That distillation is at the core of the novel's success....Anne was the result of ten years of disquiet and turbulence, years of restlessness and loneliness." (218-219)

Those who just have a passing enjoyment of Anne of Green Gables or L.M. Montgomery's other books might not enjoy this book. As I've said, extensive research into very minute details went into this book and it does get a little bogged down at times. That said, truly devoted Anne fans really should read this fascinating literary biography.

[Kyla · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this would be more biography than odd "let's match the scene in the Anne books to an actual event in LM's life". Seriously, she goes through every little incident in her life and says "X was the Gilbert in her life..." - "she liked red hair because of Y", like down to the kind of dress Anne wears to the concert in White Sands and how it is the same material as the dress L.M wore to a wedding once. While I admire the authors zeal and hunt for odd facts - not useful to the casual, or even devotedly loving, reader. Also, the author had this peculiar chatty, almost frenzied puppy quality "aren't my ideas/new/sensational?aren't they awesome? c'mon aren't they?" that was off-putting. The prologue reads like a word for word book pitch to a publisher. Perhaps it was.

[Judine · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I found much of the information fascinating, the author tended to jump around too much (and make mention of that - "more on this will be covered in the next chapter"). I felt like the author also assumed we had information we may not have (references to Maud's unhappy marriage, which I hadn't necessarily been informed of before). And some of the information was repetitive (I think we were told at least four or five times that Maud consistently misspelled her husband's name Ewan (not Ewen) and that scholars have accepted her spelling. I'm sorry, but I got it the first time. I liked the collections of photographs that were included, but thought they might have been organized better. Overall, it was an enlightening read, but not a true page turner.

[Akwhepworth · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were a few interesting things in here, but the author definitely thinks too highly of herself and her research, and the conclusions she drew were very weak. Not convincing at all. It did make me want to go read a real biography of Montgomery, though.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really disappointed in this book. Anne of Green Gables was one of my favorite books as a child, but I came away from this book having little respect for L. M. Montgomery, who is portrayed as insecure and needy. At the same time, I'm not convinced that was her true personality. I feel that Irene Gammel overanalyzed her primary sources to write this biography and that she made claims about Montgomery's influences with little more evidence than, "this magazine was delivered to her house and she would have read it so therefore this story by another author MUST have been a prototype for Anne." At the same time she underplayed other parts of Montgomery's life to the point of confusion. She mentions repetitively that Montgomery's marriage was unhappy, but doesn't go into detail as to why. The story of Montgomery's life and the influences that led to Anne are grouped thematically rather than chronologically, which I found hard to follow. She doesn't explain where or when Montgomery died, although she does for Montgomery's husband. It was maddening to read. I did give it three stars because it was well researched and I learned something about the Anne books and about L. M. Montgomery's life, but this book read more like a poorly written term paper for a literature class than a published biography.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating study of an author and her much beloved creation. Professor Gammel delves into previously unpublished materials, including private journals and correspondence, to shed new light on L.M. Montgomery's creative process, and the wide variety of influences that culminated in the creation of the character Anne Shirley.

This book is a sympathetic, insightful, and entertaining exploration. Part biography, part literary analysis, I found it a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience. Highly recommended to fans of LMM's writing.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book a little silly. First of all, I disagree with the author that the origins of Anne of Green Gables are such a mystery. Secondly, Irene Gammel's prose style got on my nerves -- I think she was striving to write like LMM herself, in a passionate, sensitive, nature-loving way, and the result is just overwrought. It was interesting that she identified the photo the LMM clipped from a magazine, and said was her inspiration for Anne, as Evelyn Nesbit, but I just don't find this as momentous as the Gammel does.

[Lindley Walter-smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a bit of a curate's egg. There are some fascinating insights here, and I especially enjoyed the exploration of Montgomer's passionate relationships with otehr girls and women combined with her sexual coldness towards young men she was supposed to be in love with - that genuinely brings the friendships in the books into new light. It was also fascinating - and really mind-mending - to see what Anne "really" looked like, the pictures of the model who inspired her, who is absolutely nothing like the Anne of popular imagination. There's also a decent amount of previously unused material in here, which is fascinating and worth the read.

But. Oh, but.

Everything Montgomery saw, everyone she met, everything she might possibly have read after all there's no reason she wouldn't have, is mined as "inspiration" for Anne of green Gables. There's an unfortunate tendency in scholarship of women writers to act like they are incapable of imagination or innovation, and this book is a major offender. Sometimes the links are so tenuous as to be laughable - a man Montgomery knew once had red hair and therefore Anne does, or Oscar Wilde visited PEI when Maud was eight therefore Anne loves flowers and pretty dresses.

This book reminded me of an undergrad thesis, and one for a student whose supervisor should have been a lot more strict with her about *thoroughly* substantiating claims, not just pulling up absolutely everything she stumbles on as evidence for her argument.

[Barb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some fascinating details on L.M. Montgomery's life, but way too much conjecture on the supposed origins of Anne and other characters. I don't think Gammel gives LMM enough credit as an imaginative writer; not every nuance of her characters need necessarily have been drawn from life!

The way this book is organized is rather disjointed; I found it hard to follow at times, as it was like a collection of vignettes, not necessarily chronologically arranged. Too many side tangents, and the author wanders into speculation as soon as she starts to fabricate LMM's responses to possible occurrences, conversations, and things she might have (but we don't know for sure that she did) read, see, hear about or be influenced by.

Kudos to Gammel for her deep immersion in LMM research, but this "biography" should have been much more rigorously edited to eliminate the fantasy passages. It doesn't have full credibility as a serious piece of research for that reason, which is a shame, because the work is certainly very much in there, just buried in the fluff.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story-behind-the-story of Anne. Interesting, but maybe I'm too many years behind, as none of the revelations were new to me, and parts were repetitive. Perhaps I would have preferred longer excerpts from the "spark" pieces? This was certainly a huge scholastic labor, combing through manuscripts and magazines and photos and the books themselves to see what Montgomery was combining. I think the research must have been vastly fascinating.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Looking for Anne of Green Gables: The Story of L.M. Montgomery by Irene Gammel.
St. Martin’s Press, 2008 0312382375

Gammel focuses on the writing of Montgomery's most famous book, uncovering sources, tracing parallels between Maud and Anne, and considering the ways in which Anne served as an alter-ego who was loved, unlike Maud, and was able to be freer than Maud ever could. She also discusses Montgomery's personal life -- her unsatisfactory family relations, her passions for other girls and then women, her desire to make a home with another woman, the men in her life, and her anxiety about male-female relationships and sexuality. Montgomery probably falls into the category of emotionally lesbian women who probably never acted on their feelings.

The book pretty much ends with the publication of Anne of Green Gables, mentioning the sequels, some trouble with her publisher, her marriage and disappointments in it, and her two sons. It then skips on to her death many years later, thus not serving as a complete biography. Still it is a fascinating portrait of a troubled woman who gifted young readers with a book that is still treasured today.

[sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author does a little too much crowing about telling the "never-before-told story!!!" of this or that aspect of the book, and then the story sometimes ends up being, well...not all that interesting or based on slightly tenuous evidence. Like, congratulations on your diligent research in early 20th century periodicals, author, but it isn't particularly relevant that the picture LMM alleged was the inspiration for Anne's face was actually of a New York model notorious for her role in a murder trial when it's pretty clear that LMM herself had absolutely no inkling of that. But where the author instead spends her time simply drawing and elaborating on the connections between Anne and LMM's inspiration from her personal life, her family, her friends, and her surroundings, the book makes for a fairly good read.

[Archana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Told me some interesting facts about how the story came about, but the author too often describes her own conclusions as "stunning" and "important," not letting me judge for myself as the reader.

[Avree Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Book May Not Be For Everyone But The True Appreciator of “Anne of Green Gables”!

3.5 ⭐️

For those who have been truly transformed or even remotely shaped by the character of Anne of “Anne of Green Gables” will definitely find pleasure in this book.

I will start with the positives and end with the negatives...

What a treasure trove of learning what parts of the famous story were as a result of Maud’s own personal experiences, magazine articles and short stories she collected, family members, neighbors, friends, etc. It was amazing to see what scenes were things that actually occurred in her life and she squirreled them away to be used in AoGG. Her own personal hardships and loss really shaped the character of Anne in which she projected on Anne the things she wished would have happened in her life and creating almost a fairytale retelling of how she wished things turned out in her own life.

Not to be cliché but I found myself a "kindred spirit" to Maud in a couple of ways...

❧“A few months after consolidating her emotions about loss, loneliness, and sympathetic fellowship, the long-unpublished journal entry of July 5, 1904 reveals Maud’s preoccupation with the passing of time and the slipping away of youth. “I have changed very much,” she wrote. “Ten years ago I was a schoolgirl,” she explained, evoking a time when she was, like Anne “too wildly elated” over joys, and “too much cast-down” over sorrows. She no longer suffered as intensely over trivial, inconsequential things. “I have learned to be tolerant of other people’s whimsies, failings.” And yet we are not entirely persuaded be her emphatic assertion. The year 1904 marked Maud’s thirtieth birthday. Yet her journal, so loquacious on other issues, makes no mention of this watershed birthday on November 30. It was a gap with a vengeance—evidence of Maud’s self-censorship.
Anne of Green Gables and its apotheosis of girlhood sprang, in part, from Maud’s own fear of aging, a fear she never openly confronted in her journal (as we shall see later), but that was very much on her mind. At the cusp of thirty, she reread her old journal, reliving the summer of 1894, tasting the youth when she was nineteen-going-on twenty and returning home from studying for her teacher’s license at Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown—just as Anne Shirley would study at Queen’s Academy in Charlottetown in the novel….
Why could “carefree” childhood not last forever? Why could pleasures not last forever? As she relived her girlhood in her upstairs room through the pages of her journal…
That time in Maud’s life was rife with nostalgic memories:…Like pearls on the necklace of life, her journal records of yesteryear were an assembly of happy memories: picking apples in the old Macneill orchard, the rustling trees around the house where she slept, the old paths and lanes, and the murmuring sea—they all seemed “radiant with ‘glory and the dream.’” Drawn from Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,: “The Glory and the Dream” would become the title of chapter thirty-six in Anne of Anne of Green Gables. Unchanged where everything else had changed, her beloved trees always appeared to Maud the perfect symbol of permanence. The almost thirty-year old author yearned for her early girlhood, when her life was full of dreams. Here, then, was the emotional basis for writing a novel, a sustained work of literature, about romanticized girlhood—a central subject in Anne of Green Gables.(page 48-50)❧

I can relate to Maud with her preoccupation of trying to relive or prolong the past, but nothing truly ever stays the same, and also her habit of looking back to a more youthful time. For a long time I was never satisfied with the age I was at, when I was 24 I wanted to be 19 again, when I was 25 I wanted to be 22 (perhaps because I felt old when Taylor sang about “feeling 22” and “dancing like we’re 22” I was disappointing in my turning 26) and for no other reason than the climbing number intimidated me…finally once I turned 26 I learned to be content and tell myself “I was never going to be younger than I am now so why bother yearning for the past…I want to make the most of 26, then 27, then 28, then 29, then 30, and now 31. I’m trying to live the best 31 I can possibly live so that way there are no regrets!

It’s funny that Maud, as I myself, lived through some unsavory aspects of our childhoods but just as she yearned for certain nostalgic memories I too struggled to try and recreate certain feelings or scenarios into adulthood and hung onto things that I turned to for comfort and for escape. I had my own places and rituals of what brought me peace and joy when things around me were chaotic, scary, or uncomfortable.

One of my favorite chunks of the book happened from page 140-143:

❧“In the winter, the world of the large homestead contracted like an old drafty castle in which only a few rooms are livable. The woman virtually lived in the kitchen: cooking, entertaining, sorting mail, reading, writing, bathing, and occasionally sleeping in the warm room. The large wood stove, centered against the coldest northern wall, radiated its heat throughout the room. From November to April, there was little privacy. There were three small bedrooms downstairs—Grandma’s, Maud’s winter bedroom, and the spare bedroom—all facing east, with kitchen, parlor, and sitting room facing west. “I hate that room venomously,” Maud wrote about her downstairs bedroom. “It’s dark and dull and I can’t even fix it up as I want to because it was ‘newly papered’ ten years ago and poor grandmother would have a convulsion if so much as a tack were driven into that ‘new’ paper. So I have no pictures and feel as if I had no eyes.”
Maud’s creative life took place upstairs. As a child and teen she would lie awake in the old Cavendish farmhouse by the eastern sea and compose stories in her mind, thinking out plots and stashing them away in her “mental storehouse.” During the summer, Maud lived in her beloved den, the gable room that was hers since age twelve. She spent time here when she was not reveling in the garden outside. “I love this room—it’s the Mecca of my heart,” she had gushed the year before on April 30, 1904….
Maud’s den was a modest room with sloping eastern and western walls, crowded with the double bed underneath the slope. Double beds were customary in rural houses, allowing families to sleep “double” when guests arrived. The miniature chair at the foot of the bed added a childlike element, while cushions, lace work, and doilies dressed the room with a maidenish and old-fashioned femininity. The room housed the author’s tools of her craft, such as her books. “I like to look up from my work occasionally and gloat my eyes on them,” she had written of her book collection in a June 17, 1900, journal entry. “They are all my pets.”…
While Maud wrote the first sentence of her first Anne book in the kitchen, she wrote most of her novel in the little upstairs room, sitting at the wooden table in the evening, near the gable window with it’s beautiful vista. From here she watched the emerald light over the hills and trees. She saw the fields—green and dewy and placid. “Oh, how I love summer twilights!”…The southern vista, framed by the window casement, was like a painting or a moving picture that changed depending on the angle of light, the weather, or the curtain stirring in the wind. In fact, this little window, with its muslin shroud, was the threshold connecting the inside with outside. In the summer the old casement would be open and she would hear the “subtly sweet voices of the night’”: the rustle of poplars, the voice of a frog, and the singing of birds. In the twilight she could see the pasture dotted with sheep…❧

I know what joy and pride I take in my book collection and I just love being surrounded by them in my home library and feel it makes my imagination come alive and just awakens my soul! My books are very precious and they just hold so much power and knowledge! I love how they can transport me to different times or place, put me in someone else’s shoes to help me grow in sympathy and empathy, help me understand people and cultures in a new light. Reading constantly improves my vocabulary and spelling—when I see a word that I perhaps had only heard but never seen physically spelled out until that point. I even love the tales that make me especially grateful to live in the time or place that I live in…for example books about medical practices at the turn-of-the-century—even though it’s dubbed the “dawn of modern medicine” it still seems so frightening a prospect to me! Reading books about the Spanish influenza, Cholera, Yellow Fever, Scarlet Fever, Smallpox, Bubonic Plague,violent wars, etc. make me so grateful that I haven’t ever had to live through something like that. Now books tend to romanticize such periods in history…but even with that I’m glad to have the modern advances we do today.

I also found Maud’s disdain for winter rather interesting:
❧“Writing Anne of Green Gables from the vantage point of her den allowed Maud to erase the parts of nature she did not like. As she grew older, she hated winter. It was the season in which she was deprived of sunlight and became a prisoner of the house…
Anne of Green Gables covers five years in the life of Anne, from age eleven to sixteen, but almost half of that plot is set in June, Maud’s favorite month on PEI and the season of young girlhood. For Maud it was the month of pagan resurrection, when she could feast on sensuous vegetation, dancing sunshine, and lovely blue skies. The novel does contain equally glowing references to autumn with its crisp and fine September mornings and its glorious October. Three chapters evoke the shorn harvest fields and the beautiful and myriad fall colors. Maud’s own birth month November, however, is omitted altogether from the account of Anne’s first two years in Avonlea, to be dismissed in the third year merely as “dull November.” Maud hated November with a passion. (page 147)
When winter is mentioned at all in Green Gables, it is to remember the nostalgic winter rituals of childhood. It is remembered for Christmas (when Matthew gives Anne her brown dress with puffed sleeves), and for the romantic sleigh ride shared by Diana and Anne. (page 148)❧

I can relate to Maud because my favorite months are June, Sept, and October…but I actually also love November because of how much I love celebrating Thanksgiving! And I don’t relate in hatred of drab winter because it’s when I often accomplish my most reading!

I found this tidbit interesting as well:
❧“Maud would have spent three hours of concentrated literary work each day: one hour of magazine work in the morning, her bread-and-butter job, one hour at the type writer in the afternoon, and one hour in the evening on her new novel. “Yes,” she confirmed to her friend Ephraim Weber on April 5, 1908, “I only do three hours’ literary work a day—two hours’ writing and one typewriting. I write fast, having ‘thought out’ plot and dialogue while I go about my household work.” Besides writing, each day was filled with housework, post office work, and caring for her grandmother. She also had her correspondence and magazine work, publishing at least forty-four stories in 1905.”❧

Now I did find some flaws with this book…for instance I thought I’d be getting a nearly complete biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery but really it’s only details the author linked to how Anne and Anne of Green Gables came about. She would allude to certain subjects, like Maud’s marriage for instance, but never actually extensively elaborated on those details.

Also the writing was a bit odd and all over the place and it felt like it jumped around and remarked about discussing a subject later on in the book and I’m not sure she adequately did explain some topics, she alluded to earlier, to my satisfaction.

I also found some parts dry and drawn out and I hit quite a slump around the first 1/3 but then it got much better into the next 2/3.

I also found some topics a bit uncomfortable and wasn't entirely sure I agreed with the authors interpretations of some of the aspects of Maud's/Anne's personalities, behavior, and experiences.

I guess what saved this book for me is I really appreciate the information I did learn and I always feel like if a book taught me something I didn’t previously know—it’s a success in my book. ;)

And something that I too have thought of with the implausibility of Anne is:
❧“The conservative New York Times Saturday Review of Books called her “one of the most extraordinary girls that ever came out of an ink pot” but also quibbled that Anne was altogether too queer: despite the fact that she has spent her life with illiterate folk and has had little schooling, she speaks with a vocabulary worthy of Bernard Shaw and has a reasoning power worthy of the Justice of the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, the reactions were largely positive. (233/234) ❧

I wondered about this very thing but it’s amazing how, just like everyone else seemed to, you overlook this seemingly minor detail looking to the grander picture of just loving the entire package of Anne Shirley…I woudn’t change a thing about this beloved character! I love you, Anne!

[Sheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gammel has a weirdly adversarial view of Maud Montgomery. She’s always implying that Montgomery is lying or dishonest about this or that; for instance, when she says that Maud said she thought women ought to be able to vote, but added the quote that Maud “did not think [suffrage] would effect as great a change as both the champions and adversaries seemed to think, and therefore she confessed that ‘it does not seem to me worth while to worry about it.’” Gammel calls this answer “opportunistic” and “disingenuous considering that she came from a family of politicians, and had listened to the fierce debates regarding suffrage in the Cavendish Literary Society.”

But it’s already been well established that Maud is not terribly in sympathy with her family on numerous levels, and it's been stated that Montgomery hated many of the fierce debates at the Literary Society (some of which she would have had to listen to as secretary), so since Gammel offers no evidence that Montgomery DOES feel strongly about the issue, it irritates me that she basically calls Montgomery a liar for no good reason. Mind you, it’s indisputable that Montgomery was often dishonest; she clearly hid various romances from the guys she was engaged to at the time, for instance. My problem is that Gummel regularly implies that Montgomery is dishonest when there’s no evidence she was lying to anyone.

It’s kind of like her implications that Montgomery had lesbian tendencies. Gammel mentions repeatedly that Montgomery loses interest in most guys once the relationship becomes physical, but never considers that Montgomery’s relationships with women wouldn’t get physical in the same way, or that they might fall apart just as rapidly if they did. She recognizes that Herman Leard was a safe fantasy figure after he died, but never considers that, when he and Montgomery were involved, he may have been safe much the way other women were safe; that due to differing social status or whatever, he wouldn't possess or try to control Montgomery sexually, or that the fact that they weren't pinned under the Cavendish gaze contributed to Montgomery's ability to relax under his touch.

Gammel also implies that Montgomery is being dishonest in not recognizing one of Jefferson Lee Harbour's stories as an inspiration for Anne of Green Gables, even as she describes the story she believes inspired Montgomery as “one of the formula orphan stories that helped inspire her novel’s heroine.” If it was one of many with a similar formula – which it was – why should Montgomery go out of her way to recognize it as partial inspiration? Besides, speaking as someone who has written fiction, there’s no way I could name or remember all the individual stories, pictures, or concepts that may have gone into my story, nor am I necessarily aware of even half of them on an intellectual level. Stories get worked out in the subconscious, and the subconscious is not known for keeping things tagged that way.

The other thing Gammel does that got on my nerves is present Montgomery as someone who is trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. She says, “In her characteristic and sometimes quixotic way of reconciling opposites, Maud’s own example suggested that ambition must not sacrifice loyalty, nor must loyalty sacrifice high ambition.” But loyalty and ambition are not actually opposites, nor does choosing one necessarily mean abandoning the other. The two supposedly incompatible ideas Gammel harps on the most are Montgomery’s “pagan” love of nature and her Christianity. But Christianity has a long tradition of arguing that God created all good, therefore whatever is good in nature was created by God. From that perspective, the only difference between a pagan and a Christian loving and appreciating nature is that the Pagan worships the created, while the Christian is worshiping the creator.

Gammel’s discussion of Montgomery frolicking on the beach in her undies reminded me of Michal scolding King David for “dancing before the Lord” in his undies. Like Michal, Gammel's trying to turn stylistic preferences into God's law. Montgomery’s “pagan” streak is no more a threat to her Christianity than C.S. Lewis praising Bacchus was a threat to his. My reading is that Montgomery had a much harder time reconciling her Christian beliefs and her need to keep up appearances, or her Christian beliefs and her family pride, than she ever did reconciling her Christian beliefs and her “paganish” love of nature. If reconciling her Christianity with her love of nature actually was Montgomery’s problem, and not Gammel’s, Gammel doesn’t offer much evidence of Montgomery finding it a challenge.

Since while reading I kept asking, “But, wait, how does that opinion fit with the info you offered over here…?” I used the index a lot, so I really appreciated that there WAS an index, and a good one, for my purposes. Gammel provides plentiful notes and references, as well, which is lovely. She made some perceptive observations that were well articulated. And there’s a lot of info in this book on Montgomery's life and on possible influences on her fiction, particularly when it comes to Anne of Green Gables.

But for me, ultimately the book seemed more about Gammel’s issues with Montgomery than about Montgomery. This is the only biographic kinda thing I’ve read on Montgomery; if it turns out there’s harder evidence elsewhere on some of the stuff Gammel harped on, then I might concede that the book is more about Montgomery than about Gammel, but if that's the case, the star rating wouldn't change because my opinion of Gammel’s abilities to support her own arguments will go down, since my current theory is that she didn’t present more evidence on her pet theories because it doesn’t exist.

[Colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had an interesting conceit: how was one of the most beloved characters in literature created? It’s something we all wonder of our favorites, but for Anne Shirley fans we don’t have much to go on, since Montgomery was notoriously guarded in her personal legacy. Irene Gammel decided to find out what influences may have inspired Montgomery to create Anne, and the results that Gammel produces are a bit mixed.

This was published in 2008 as part of the centenary celebration of the publication Anne of Green Gables. Gammel, in her intro and author bio, explained that she wrote this not only as part of celebration, but also as a labor of love. This showed, since Gammel is very thorough in digging up influences. Almost too thorough. Since Montgomery did not record much about the process of writing Anne in her journal and letters, Gammel turned to some of the magazines that Montgomery received to see if she may have gotten inspiration from that. As a result, almost ANYTHING from those magazines may have had an influence on Montgomery, from the numerous orphan stories in Sunday School periodicals, to the advertisements for hair dye. Anything that seems remotely related, Gammel tied back to Anne. The logic leaps became so numerous that they become unbelievable and distracting; anytime the Delineator was mentioned I kept on waiting for Gammel to follow it up with another loosely-tied connection to Anne.

Some of the snippets Gammel included were truly interesting, such as the exact photo of Evelyn Nesbit that Montgomery used to model Anne’s face after, and the legal disputes Montgomery had with her first publisher, L.C. Page and Company. Her in-depth study of Montgomery’s close romantic friendships with women was fascinating as well. The photos included in the book, from pictures of Montgomery’s family to the advertisements for Anne, were really cool, and they helped keep the book from devolving into a huge game of logic leaps.

The biggest quibble I actually have with this book was not the logic leaps, believe it or not, but the repetitive vocabulary. Gammel attempted to write this similar to Montgomery’s florid, vocabulary-dense style, but fell flat since she kept on repeating the same words over and over and OVER again. It got to the point that I never wanted to see the word ‘sensuous’ again, lest I attack the author with a thesaurus.

In the end, this was a mixed bag of delight and dullness. I LOVED having a serious piece of literary criticism about Anne, since it’s few and far between. However Gammel’s execution was flawed in the vast amount of shaky references and the writing style. I recommend it for people who have some background knowledge of Montgomery’s life beforehand and are avid fans of the Anne novels. For the casual fan or reader, I suggest they skip it.

[Marrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating Clarification: 3.5 Stars

As anyone who looks at my shelves knows, I don’t often read non-fiction. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I read a biography before beginning this one. However, when I was looking through the library at my new town I happened to end up in the nonfiction section by sheer coincidence. As I was about to turn around this yellow book caught my attention and I stopped to look at it. I love Anne of Green Gables but have rarely thought much of its author. I battled with myself for a few moments before deciding to borrow it.

And thank god I did!

I learned a lot about both the Victorian era, turn of the century, and L.M. Montgomery- or Maud Montgomery- while reading this. I never imagined that her life was so interesting. Even when I thought of L.M. Montgomery I imagined her as a spinster old lady, writing Anne. I have learned how interesting her life really was and about her husband and her great attachment to her girlfriends.

This book sheds a lot of light on the main characters of Anne and where all of the inspiration for them came from. It pointed out some satirical and rebellious things about the book that I did not even notice while reading it. It made me want to reread the book now that I have all of this newfound knowledge about the author and the book. The women in Maud’s life inspired her greatly, it would seem, which explains the highly matriarchal society of Anne of Green Gables. How distantly Maud felt towards men and how close she felt towards women explains a great deal to me about the Anne books.

Another thing I found interesting was why she married the man she did and how truly sad the end of her life was, living in this loveless marriage. I also thought it was interesting that the fact that Maud herself was an orphan effected the rest of her life, both when it came to her writing and her relationships. This book also explains that Gilbert was actually based off of two unresolved lovers from Maud’s past.

In general, I found this book greatly interesting and it made me want to read more biographies. The author obviously did their research and it was a very well-written biography. The reason I only gave it 3.5 stars as opposed to 4 is because I found the author could be a bit verbose and she restated a few concepts over and over again. I also thought the book could have been shortened and certain parts of Maud’s life did not need to be explained in such great detail.

I would recommend this book to Anne of Green Gables lovers everywhere or to anyone who wants to read more nonfiction/biographies. I think this book would be a great place to start. I enjoyed this book and hope that anyone else who picks it up likes it as much as I did.

[Natalie Waddell-Rutter · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book that is something for the die-hard Anne fan to read. I did enjoy learning more about Maud’s life and literary career (she started in short stories published in magazines). I also enjoyed learning more about the life of women in the early 1900s. Maud pulled inspiration from everything from fashion to the poetry of the day to her gardens to her physical surroundings. It does make me want to go to Prince Edward Island for a visit. The book contains three sections of photographs, many of which correspond to images discussed in the text. That was nice so I didn’t have to imagine the photo Maud first saw as an inspiration for her character of Anne. I could actually see the image.

I did find it interesting that Maud self-censored her journals. Reading after the fact, we can’t be sure exactly how she felt at critical times in her life. She often burned her letters and old notebooks, too, so the image she was leaving for posterity wasn’t left to chance and circumstances. One thing that is quite murky was her sex life. Maud liked her men to be charming, but seemed to shut down as soon as they got physically intimate. She didn’t seem to pull away from her female friends, though. Certainly makes you wonder!

[Bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't a perfect book. I believe the author made some interesting connections between L.M. Montgomerey's experiences and literary influences and Anne of Green Gables, but since there is almost no hard evidence about the writing of Anne, in some cases her speculations feel like a stretch. I also felt the book suffered a bit from spots of purple prose. (A sentence like "Grandmother's reserve could be like the icy wind that blew across the Atlantic during the long winter of 1905" would be understandable if it were a quote from LMM, who directly experienced both her grandmother and the winter of 1905, but it seems overwrought coming from Gammel, who did neither.)

That said, I enjoyed this book for the window it gives into L.M. Montgomerey's character and the way some of her experiences were directly reflected in her fiction. In many ways I found LMM unlikeable, but I also felt saddened by the cold way she was treated by her family members, and it's interesting to think that the warmth and love Anne discovers were in part a form of wish-fulfillment.

The book also inspired to reread Anne, which is always a plus!

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt like the author spent most of her time speculating, based on circumstantial evidence, on what probably influenced Maud Montgomery while she was writing ANNE. For instance, she would say things like "this story was in this magazine which Maud most likely read, so it MUST have had an influence on her!" She also explored various friends and family members and their influence on the writing of ANNE.

And although the author more or less goes chronologically through the period in which ANNE was written, she also jumps around through Maud's life for other information, which feels a bit haphazard. I've read other books about Maud, as well as the first two Selected Journals (back in the 90s), but I still felt a bit lost and not in the know (I'm not as immersed in Maud-lore as I am in, say, Wilder-lore, though).

The book did pick up speed and my interest toward the end, though, as the author covered the period after publication and touches on the sequels.

[Beth E · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book surprised me with how much I liked it and yet some aspects bugged me.

I did like how it goes into great detail of L. M. Montgomery's life and dissects every detail related to the Anne books. However, sometimes details and events were presented out of order and the book seemed to jump around a fair bit. Some of the details seemed forced, particularly the detail that was given about Evelyn Nesbit, whose photograph inspired some inspiration for Anne.

I also would have liked more information about her other books. I realize that this book is focused primarily on Anne, but it was odd to me that there was so little about the other books and their heroines.

What I really thought was cool was the information about L. M. Montgomery's notebooks, where she kept clippings, pictures and ideas. The notebooks sound a good deal like a precursor to Pinterest!

[Dichotomy Girl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was actually quite an interesting book, as I knew very little about the author of the classic Anne of Green Gables. This is not a complete biography, but only a snapshot of the people, places and events in the author's life that contributed to the creation of Anne.

One thing I definitely would not have guessed it what a sad, unfortunate life the author lived, but I guess she channeled all the happy endings she wished for into her writings.

This book probably would not appeal to anyone who is not a big fan of the author or her most famous character.

[Alaina · Rating 2 out of 5]

This work is well-researched, and the author clearly cares about preserving the personality and work of L.M. Montgomery. However, I find the writing style overly sensational, and I strongly disagree with a few of Irene Gammel's conclusions. She reads far too much eroticism into L.M. Montgomery's life and writing, and she disregards any moral motivation in any of her major life decisions, preferring to call it culturally conditioned. I wish that someone had introduced her to the distinction between the words sensual and sensory.

[Judine Brey · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I found much of the information fascinating, the author tended to jump around too much for the biography to make linear sense. She also seemed to assume that we had information we may not have had.

[Kaydon_the_dino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did I even know there was a mystery here? No, but then again, I know next to nothing about LM Montgomery (she was married?!). But this book is fascinating and highly readable, I finished it over three evenings. And the pictures are amazing!

[sacha kenton · Rating 5 out of 5]

did you know anne of green gables was a lesbian? makes perfect sense...

[Amy Roebuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

The better you know LMM's works, the more you will enjoy this lit crit bio.
That being said, my husband who has never read anything by LMM, and who has only watched parts of the Kevin Sullivan productions (and only the first episode of Anne with an E), read through a great deal of this book. He said,'The author writes so well, it's interesting without even having read the books '. Congratulations, Irene Gammel. Our family salutes you.

[Kitty · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting biography. I love stories of Victorian romantic friendships. I prefer them to end in Boston marriages, but I am satisfied by the intensity here. I know the point of this is a beloved children’s book, but I am much more interested in turn of the century sexuality.