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

Beginning when Lucy Maud Montgomery is fourteen, this first volume takes her to 1910, the year before her marriage, when she left Prince Edward Island. It recounts her schooldays in Cavendish, redolent with incidents, impressions, and romantic "crushes" that found their way into her fiction; a year spent in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan with her father and stepmother; a year of study at Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, where she trained to be a teacher, and another at Dalhousie University; her teaching years; a powerful infatuation with the son of a family she lived with; a long and mostly unhappy period of keeping house for her grandmother; and the publication of Anne of Green Gables. The autobiographical content will fascinate every devoted reader of the Anne books. But the Montgomery journals are especially interesting because they provide a unique social history and the privilege of viewing closely the life of a remarkable woman. Comprising perhaps the most vivid and detailed memoir in Canadian letters, the journals will join Anne of Green Gables in ensuring Montgomery's lasting place in Canadian literature. This volume is a rich and engrossing prelude to the whole.

Mary Rubio's profile page

Elizabeth Waterston is Professor Emeritus, University of Guelph. She is a lifetime member of the Association of Canadian Studies and a former National President of the Humanities Association of Canada.

Elizabeth Waterston's profile page

"Montgomery's journals provide not only poignant and entertaining reading, but a fine source of social, medical and literary history as well." - Atlantic Books Today

"For anyone under the mistaken impression that Montgomery's novels represent the pinnacle of her literary output, her journals are a must-read." - Canadian Book Review Annual

"Montgomery comes to life in a way that is only possible in the pages of a journal." - Toronto Star

"These journals are an important contribution, not just to literary and social history but to the body of Canadian literature." - Books in Canada

"The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery...have given me enormous pleasure." Carol Shields, The Boston Globe

"As a document and tribute to the sensibility of a fine Canadian writer, it is invaluable." - Calgary Herald

"These are journals so enlightening, so full of wisdom, humor, philosophy and tragedy that they are worth a winter's reading and reflection." - Ottawa Citizen

"We owe Professors Rubio and Waterston a very large debt of gratitude for their patient work on these volumes; they are a record of life-writing unique in our literature and outstanding in any company." - Clara Thomas, Literary Review of Canada