Elizabeth Waterston is a 2011 Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada.In the 1920s, L.M. Montgomery is in mature mid-life, and her personal and professional lives are becoming even more complex. Montgomery juggles the demands of motherhood, parish obligations, indifferent household help, grief at the loss of older friends and family, and appeals by her P.E.I. clan for advice and assistance. There are also triumphs and trials more closely related to her position as a best-selling author: growing fame, the successful launch of her new heroines ‘Emily’ and ‘Marigold’, the struggle to allocate time for correspondence with publishers and fans – and actually to write.

We trace the happy conclusion of her lawsuits against an unscrupulous publisher, and the disappointing outcome of the tempest-in-a-teapot suit arising from a minor automobile accident. There are more personal worries: the Rev. Ewan Macdonald’s envy of his wife’s publishing and social success; the dark shadow cast by his recurrent attacks of religious melancholia; her concern lest their sons show similar tendencies. This volume of her journals shows Montgomery to be a complex, sensitive, successful and surprisingly contemporary writer.