• Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) •

Read about Montgomery through the years 1920-1935. A proper bibliography is listed below the timeline.

1920 March:

Page brings out Further Chronicles of Avonlea from manuscripts in their vault, against the author's express command. April: Uncle John Franklin Macneill pulls down the house in Cavendish where Maud had lived with her grandparents. May-July: The Page case is heard in Boston; Montgomery testifies for three weeks. September: Page countersues for libel. The original Page case it thrown out of court in August, and the company appeals to the Massachusetts Supreme Court and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court. The entire lawsuit is to last nine years. December: Montgomery begins Emily of New Moon.

1921

Rilla of Ingleside is published. June 12: The Macdonald car, with Ewan driving, collides with a car driven by Marshall Pickering of Zephyr.

1922 February:

Montgomery finishes Emily of New Moon, "the best book I have ever written." March-April: Marshall Pickering initiates a lawsuit, claiming compensation for injuries allegedly suffered in the June 12, 1921, car accident. May: Montgomery begins "Emily II." November 23-24: The Pickering suit comes to trial and the judge finds against Ewan, awarding damages of some $3000. The Macdonalds decide to appeal. Pickering's lawyer endeavors to attach Ewan's salary.

1923 January:

Montgomery is invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. April: A judge finds in her favour over the 1920 Further Chronicles of Avonlea case. The Page suit is thrown out by the Massachusetts Supreme Court. The Page Company files an appeal and institutes a new libel suit. August: Emily of New Moon is published.

1924

Early June: The Page libel suit it dismissed.June 23: Montgomery agrees to write four stories for The Delineator for $1600.

1925

A controversy over a proposed union of the Presbyterians with the Methodists (voted for by the Presbyterian General Assembly of 1923 and now to be implemented) divides the Presbyterian church in Canada; Ewan and Montgomery are against the union. March 5: The U.S. Supreme Court decides against Page. March: Ewan has a bad mental relapse; Montgomery completes Emily Climbs. April: She begins The Blue Castle , set in the Muskoka, Ontario area. June 20: Member of the church at Zephyr vote to leave the Presbyterians for the United Church. Summer: Emily Climbs is published. September 24: Montgomery finishes her stories for The Delineator. October: The Supreme Court of New York dismisses the complaint of the Page Company. December: Ewan accepts a call to the Presbyterian churches of Norval and Union, Ontario.

1926 February

The Macdonalds move to the manse in Norval. April: Montgomery is at work on the third Emily book and hears that her playfellow Wellington Nelson recently died. Spring: Ewan has a bad attack of melancholia. June: Montgomery attends a Canadian Women's Press Club meeting in Toronto and has a visit from her half-sister Ila May ("one of the race of Joseph") and her three children. August: The Blue Castle is published. November: Montgomery finishes Emily's Quest.

1927

The Delineator offers $2000 for new series and four stories. May: A Mrs. Carroll of The Delineator calls and takes the Marigold stories back with her. June: Montgomery begins a book about Marigold. She undertakes the support of a female orphan, Flossie Roberts, at St. Anthony's Orphanage, Newfoundland, having earlier supported a male orphan up to working age. Summer: Talk of a play based on The Blue Castle comes to nothing. She makes a visit to P.E.I. and receives a letter of praise from Stanley Baldwin, the prime minister of Great Britain. August: The lieutenant-governor of Canada invites her to a garden party to meet the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) and Prince George (later King George VI) as well as Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Baldwin. October: A new editor of The Delineator decides the Marigold stories are not to be printed, as not sophisticated enough.

1928 Spring:

The beginnings of serious conflicts between Montgomery and her son Chester. July: She meets Ephraim Weber, her long-time correspondent, for the first time. October 17: She finishes Magic for Marigold. October 20: Montgomery receives a letter from her lawyer saying Page has lost its last plea and will settle. November 6: Montgomery opens Canadian Book Week in Toronto, speaking to an audience of 2000 at Convention Hall. November 7: Montgomery receives a cheque for $15,000 of the $18,000 ultimately paid by Page in its settlement.

1929 April:

One chapter of Magic for Marigold is published, in Chatelaine magazine. May: Montgomery begins work on The Tangled Web/Aunt Becky Began It. Magic for Marigold is published.

1930

The author begins copying and editing her own journals, with photographs.

1931 February:

Montgomery finishesThe Tangled Web/Aunt Becky Began It, published later in the year (in England it appears under the title Aunt Becky Began It). Spring: Montgomery begins Pat of Silver Bush. She makes her first radio broadcast, reading her poems, and publishes her "Open Letter from a Minister's Wife".

1932

Pat of Silver Bush is finished and published.

1933 September:

Montgomery's second son, Stuart, enters the University of Toronto as a medical student. December: Chester reveals his secret marriage to Luella Reid.

1934 January 15:

Montgomery begins a Pat sequel, called The Chatelaine of Silver Bush, later entitled by its publisher Mistress Pat. May 17: The birth of Montgomery's first grandchild, Luella. Ewan has a total breakdown and spends from June to August in Homewood Sanatorium, a mental hospital in Guelph, Ontario. Montgomery herself is in bad health. She publishes Courageous Women, in collaboration with Marian Keith and Mabel Burns McKinley. November 30: On her sixtieth birthday she finishes Mistress Pat.

Bibliography/Reference: Montgomery, Lucy Maud, Wendy E. Barry, Margaret Anne Doody and Mary E. Doody Jones. The Annotated Anne of Green Gables. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Last updated: December 25, 2005
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