The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume IV:1929-1935

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery #4

by Mary Rubio (Editor), Mary Henley Rubio

Elizabeth Waterston is a 2011 Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada.

The fourth volume of the immensely successful The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery covers the years from 1929 to 1935, a tumultuous period in the writer's life. By 1929, Montgomery was 54 years old and known world-wide as the author of Anne of Green Gables and many other books, yet this was also a time of numerous setbacks. The stock market crash, a drop in royalties from her many books, the need to provide her two sons with a university education, her husband's modest church salary in arrears, and the fact that many loans she made to friends and family were not repaid, placed Montgomery in the position where she had to type her own manyscripts for the first time since 1910. She also had to face personal crises as her sons' university results were extremely disappointing, her husband suffered a total nervous breakdown, she had concerns over her own mental state, there was further controversy in her husband's parish -- Norval Presbyterian Church -- and Montgomery became the unwilling object of a young woman's declaration of passionate love. Yet this was not a period of joy as well--the volume opens with joyful travels to Prince Edward Island and western Canada and ends with her looking forward with great excitement to a new life in Toronto.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Canada, Memoir, Classics, Biography Memoir, Historical

470 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. Maud has several years of relative peace and comfort. I begin to see that she is not nearly as harsh and judgmental as I had previously supposed. She uses the journals to complain which gives them more of a negative tint, but as I read between the lines I can see that she generally does not really hate the people that annoy her and can even enjoy their company. She continues more generous than wise with her money which becomes a problem for her during the great depression. Toward the end new trials emerge, as well as a resurgence of the old, and I am afraid this brings her to a sadly cynical point of view that she cannot enjoy anything because she will have to pay for it with a greater trial later. The bitter devastation she suffers from the secret marriage of her son and his misfortune in his first choice of profession seems an over the top response to me but I am not parent and live in a different time, so I cannot judge.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

These journals get increasingly depressing- you can see some suicidal thoughts she's having. One moment I really felt for her was when she turned sixty and said that it was the first time she had no loved ones with her on her birthday. In this volume, her husband's mental issues get much worse and he's hospitalized for a long time. Her son knocks a girl up and has to marry her, which she's so horrified by that she can't bring herself to write about it for a long time. (She was writing the Pat books during this time, and I think this was the inspiration behind Pat's brother marrying a girl the family didn't like.) Said son also has a lot of problems in school, which she stresses out about. And there's a whole thing with a fan named Isobel who she became friendly with but who kept writing her these scary-intense love letters. Maud's reaction to them is unsettling for a couple of reasons: first, because her views on homosexuality are not exactly enlightened and she writes some very upsetting things, and second, because why the heck does she keep responding to Isobel, sometimes even visiting her? Like...why aren't you just trashing the letters the moment they come and not bothering to respond? It was confusing. The volume ends with her husband leaving his church as they move to Toronto.

[Hana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maud endured so much and her resilience and strength is evident in the fact that despite all the hardships, her husband’s mental illness and her own depression, she still managed to write and publish more books! It hurts so much to read of her clear depression, I found myself sighing and saying O Maud, I wish I could have given you a hug. I hugely relate to her high sensitivity and her love of nature and I love her way of describing the beauty of the world. It was extremely difficult to read sometimes knowing what we do about her eventually taking her own life. I’m dreading the next and last volume.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're a super-fan of LM Montgomery, it's interesting to see her personal writing...but it is a journal so she's constantly writing about people and places you don't know. This is a later volume when she's in her '50's and 60's. I thought it was sad that her husband is hardly mentioned and in every single entry she's complaining about her health-mental and physical. And about a crazy young fan who she detests but she's constantly visiting and placating. It's wearing to read, and I didn't make it to the end. I liked the old photos and hearing about her visits to "the Island".

[Janine Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love reading L. M. M’s journals, I do prefer the complete journals over these selected journals, I don’t care for the choppy reading of these and the complete journals also provide a wealth of contextual information in the footnotes which the selected journals have in the appendix rather than the bottom of the page and they are much less thorough in the selected version. Unfortunately the complete journals don’t have a final volume so I switched to these to be able to read to the end of her life.

[Elinor Loredan]

A bit of a long slog, although it is fascinating in spots. But mostly it is full of despair and misery. I found myself frustrated with L.M.M. She continued to overload herself by not saying no and then complains of fatigue. Then she does not cut off communication with fanatical Isobel. I wanted to shout at her to say no to things and stop writing to or seeing Isobel. But then, I myself am terrible at setting boundaries. Despite the almost uninterrupted gloom, I would like to read the fifth volume.

[M.E. Hembroff]

Loved reading about her. She has been my favorite author for many years. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes L. M. Montgomery's books. I would rate it 5 stars.

[Zoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

On my second time reading these journals, it is astonishing the way one person can endure so much - and a reminder of the small actions people perform that can add to a load or lighten it. Maud's homophobia is horrible to read, but Laura Robinson's article offered a new way of reading Isobel and Maud's response to her: a kind of homosociality between women that had an effective currency in Maud's childhood that lost its acceptance after Freud's works were published and sexualised the language of affection women had for each other.

In spite of the economic crash of 1929 and the consequent financial worries they caused, Volume 4 is in many ways one of the lighter of her journals - or perhaps the feeling is more restrained and concealed as Maud knows people will one day read this. It is interesting that in all her concerns about money, she never sells any of her possessions, proving that while her modest wealth is affected by the Wall Street Crash, she retains enough to remain firmly middle-class.

Chester and Luella have such a modern relationship that wouldn't cause so many concerns these days, but which seem to have utterly ruined Maud's life at the time - a potential product of the sexual repression she grew up indoctrinated by.

[Mireille Duval · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me forever to read it but I still quite liked it. Life in Norval was much more interesting than Leaskdale, and the Chester drama made for more interesting reading than the Pickering one - though it was of course terribly sad for L.M. It's something of a heavy read, with the depression felt by both her and her husband, the constant discussion of how well they slept or what drugs they used. This book seemed to discuss actual writing even less than usual (except for a fair amount of Mistress Pat. I'm looking forward to the next book, though I guess considering how everything ends it's silly to hope that things will pick up in Toronto...

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are getting harder and harder to read--Montgomery is slipping deeper and deeper into depression as external events (a contentious congregation at her husband's parish) and home events (difficulties with her adult children, her husband's mental illness) cause intense strain and misery. Still, she sometimes finds the good in life.

One volume left to go; I was hoping that the last years of her life would be more pleasant, but a week or so ago LMM's granddaughter released a statement, saying the family had agreed it was time to tell the truth: LMM committed suicide. So, that last journal: probably not going to be so cheerful.

[Melanie Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love all of LM Montgomery's writing. It's always been something that cheered me up and made me see good in the world. Reading this journal of her life made me realize she struggled with depression, and to me this makes her stories even more amazing as she found the joy to share with others that she couldn't always find in her own real life.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was hard to read. It's clear she's completely depressed. The sensitivity with which she wrote her books, which made them such a success, is the same one that made her feel everything so keenly, and thus contributed to her depression.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

hard to get ahold of- snippets of her life from one of my favourite writers... writeresses?

[Maria Elmvang · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love reading about the life of LMM, as she's one of my favourite authors, and I find it absolutely fascinating how different her life is from that of the characters in her books.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too depressing to talk about

[Mitzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Maud's journals is very bittersweet - there was so much hardship and sadness in her life...