A Golden Wedding

by L.M. Montgomery

Genres: Short Stories

Unknown Binding

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

[Majenta · Rating 5 out of 5]

A golden story. Awww....

[Manybooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of course and indeed, if a reader were to approach Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1909 A Golden Wedding (and which I first encountered in the edited by the late Rea Wilmshurst 1991 collection of quasi time themed Montgomery short stories titled After Many Days: Tales of Time Passed) expecting some nuanced and inherently philosophical tale, he or she could very likely be more than a bit textually disappointed. For with regard to L.M. Montgomery’s presented contents and themes, with her actual story, there is if truth be told honestly nothing all that textually deep and thought provoking to be seen in A Golden Wedding, with it just being a simple and also rather generic account of a man returning to his hometown after many years and thanking his now destitute foster family by buying back their foreclosed house, by paying their debts and thus rescuing them from the poorhouse.

However and in my opinion, one also does not always require one’s reading experiences and materials to be fundamentally enlightening and heavily nuanced, as well and definitely, sometimes just reading a short piece of fiction that is the epitome of tender sweetness and all things bright and beautiful is what is both wanted and required. And with this in mind, A Golden Wedding absolutely fits the above to a proverbial T, and not only do I find A Golden Wedding and L.M. Montgomery’s caressingly and sweetly penned text like a flavourful even if rather unsubstantial in substance reading candy treat, and certainly just like a candy, I am also often craving for more and more of the same and will therefore also reread A Golden Wedding and how Lovell Stevens saves Aunt Tom and Aunt Sally from having to spend their Golden Wedding in the poorhouse repeatedly and always with total joy and pleasure.

And indeed, my rating for A Golden Wedding is totally, uncritically and unabashedly five stars (and I do very highly recommend A Golden Wedding but of course will and must end my review with once again pointing out that A Golden Wedding is not anything deep and spectacular but is definitely a pleasant and utterly delightful and wonderful tale, a story feeling like a warm and fluffy reading blanket). Oh and yes, the majority of the L.M. Montgomery short stories which Rea Wilmshurst has included in After Many Days: Tales of Time Passed are my indeed and like A Golden Wedding delightfully sweet even if not all that deep (and therefore, with regard to After Many Days: Tales of Time Passed, I do very much think that this is certainly a perfect Lucy Maud Montgomery reading experience for enjoyment but without too much intellectual straining and pondering).

[ندىٰ · Rating 3 out of 5]

"And you've got your two hands still and an old couple's prayers and blessings. Not such a bad capital, Lovell, not such a bad capital."

[Katja Labonté · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nrtc

5 stars & 5/10 hearts. This is a very sweet little story, all about redemption and blessings coming home and heartwarming love. <33

A Favourite Quote: “I'll never forget how kind and good they was to me. There I was, when Dad died, a little sinner of eleven, just heading for destruction. They give me a home and all the schooling I ever had and all the love I ever got. It was Aunt Sally's teachings made as much a man of me as I am. I never forgot 'em and I've tried to live up to 'em.”
A Favourite Humorous Quote: “For the next fortnight Lovell and Mrs. Stetson did so much travelling round together that Jonah said genially he might as well be a bachelor as far as meals and buttons went.”

[K. Anna Kraft · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have arranged my thoughts on this short story into a haiku:

"There's no measuring
How kindness shown to a child
Is later valued."

[Alayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely story about a couple in the poorhouse and their old hand who returns from the west and spends all he has to restore them to their old home.

[Rosemary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many thanks to Project Gutenberg for making L.M. Montgomery's short stories available to read online.