“Its enchantment has never faded”
L.M. Montgomery wrote in her journal that over the years, the house she was born in became “shabbier than before,” but that “its enchantment has never faded in my eyes. I always look for it with the same eager interest when I turn the corner,” she said (December 31, 1898).
Last week, my family and I visited the L.M. Montgomery Birthplace Museum in New London, Prince Edward Island. I’ve visited several times over the past thirty years and always find it moving to read of Montgomery’s mother’s death from tuberculosis before her first and only child had turned two.
I was glad to see some of my favourite books by and about LMM in the museum shop, including Anne of Green Gables: The Original Manuscript, edited by Carolyn Strom Collins (and proofread by Marianne Ward), the beautiful Tundra editions of Montgomery’s novels featuring cover art by Elly MacKay, Mary Henley Rubio’s excellent biography Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings, and two wonderful novels inspired by Montgomery’s life: After Anne, by Logan Steiner, and Maud, by Melanie J. Fishbane.
Marianne, Logan, and Melanie have all contributed guest posts for my blog:
“L.M. Montgomery and Emily Carr, Worshippers of the Woods,” by Marianne Ward
“People Who Love Our Places,” by Logan Steiner
“Searching for Maud in the ‘Emily’ Series,” by Melanie J. Fishbane
The view from Village Pottery in New London, another of my family’s favourite places in PEI
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Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them:
“It blooms as if it meant it” (quotations from L.M. Montgomery and Jane Austen, with photos from a lavender farm in Prince Edward Island)
“And—there was the sea” (quotations from the letters of L.M. Montgomery and photos of beaches in Prince Edward Island)
(P.S. If you’re interested in the celebration of “Jane Austen in the Public Gardens” in Halifax on August 17th, rsvp on our Facebook event page. All are welcome!)
My debut novel, The Austens, will be published by Pottersfield Press on September 15th. Now available for pre-order!
Copyright Sarah Emsley 2025 ~ All rights reserved. No AI training: material on http://www.sarahemsley.com may not be used to “train” generative AI technologies.
