Maud's House of Dreams

Book excerpt: An engaging, highly moving young adult biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery, the beloved author of Anne of Green Gables, the Emily series, and many more treasured stories. This year, 2002, marks the 60th anniversary of Lucy Maud Montgomery's death. Maud Montgomery was not yet two years old when she saw her mother for the last time. The journey from that day to the day Maud signed "Lucy Maud Montgomery" at the end of her first published story was long and often painful. In this compelling portrait of one of Canada's best-loved writers for young people, another beloved, award-winning young-adult author, Janet Lunn, vividly brings to life the spirit that was Lucy Maud Montgomery. Lunn shows us Montgomery's strict and lonely upbringing in rural Prince Edward Island, her eventual marriage to a man she did not love but who was deemed an ideal match, and her hard-won successes after many years of self-doubt and rejection. Throughout her life, Maud never stopped writing her journals and stories. L.M. Montgomery is undoubtedly Canada's most famous author. Today, sixty years after her death her books have been translated into nearly every language, and dozens of plays, musical plays, films and made-for-television series of her works have been produced. In 1975, a Canadian Anne of Green Gables postage stamp was issued, and in Japan, where her stories are hugely popular, there are two Anne theme parks. At the end of 1999, when lists of the last century's favourite writers were being compiled, the name Lucy Maud Montgomery led all others.