Montgomery

"Montgomery is in mature mid-life,and her personal and professional lives are becoming even more complex. (She) juggles the demands of motherhood, parish obligations, indifferent household help, grief at the loss of older friends and family, appeals by her PEI clan for advice and assistance - everyday struggles to balance a woman's social and domestic duties. There are also triumphs and trials more closely related to her position as a best-selling author: growing fame, the successful midwifery of her new heroines 'Emily' and 'Marigold' and a more adult novel, 'The Blue Castle'; the struggle to allocate time for correspondence with publishers, fans, pen-friends - 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 evince similar tendencies. In mid-decade, Ewan Macdonald accepts a call to Norval, Ontario and Montgomery leaves 'dear Leaskdale' with mixed feelings. In these years, LMM turns more and more to her journal to record insights and opinions not voiceable by 'the angel of the house', as well as the brief epiphanies of delight in nature's beauty that have always sustained her. Her journal is an important example of life-writing - writing in the autobiographical mode - by a complex, sensitive, successful, and suprisingly contemporary writer."443p. illus notes. index. Signed on title page by both editors. Book