Product Description

Lucy Maud Montgomery is Canada's best-known writer of children's fiction. Anne of Green Gables-- in print, film, television, on stage--captures people's imaginations as easily now as it did when it burst upon the world in 1908.

Lucy Maud Montgomery grew up in Prince Edward Island and she set her best-loved stories there. She worked briefly as a journalist, but family responsiblities shaped her life as a young single woman. At 36 she married a dour, often depressive Presbyterian minister and moved to Ontario. There she lived a life of contradictions--in private, the romantic, successful imaginative writer; in public the strict, dutiful minister's wife.

Using diaries and letters Lucy Maud never intended to be made public, The Wheel of Things is a pioneering biography of one of Canada's most successful and important writers. Since its publication, the release of Montgomery's diaries and other work by scholarly writers have confirmed the life story that Mollie Gillen tells so well in this important and path-breaking biography.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1254590 in Books
• Published on: 1983-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 204 pages

Review
"Mollie Gillen has made Lucy Maud Montgomery a vividly real human being, in a biography as readable as its subject's own novels."
- Quill & Quire

"Distinguished historian and biographer Mollie Gillen corrects that oversight with this portrait of a 'vividly real human being.'"
- Ottawa Citizen

"... an unexpected and delightful surprise ... a fresh and in-depth picture of a truly remarkable woman."
- Halifax Chronicle-Herald

Review
"Millions have shared her dreams ... a perceptive and sympathetic portrait of a complex personality." (Ottawa Journal )

"Mollie Gillen has made Lucy Maud Montgomery a vividly real human being, in a biography as readable as its subject's own novels." (Joan McGrath Quill & Quire )

About the Author
MOLLIE GILLEN's writing career started in the 50s. As a federal government information officer in Ottawa, she edited government journals. In 1995, she received Hon.D.Litt. from her alma mater, Sydney University, for her work on the First Fleet and the history of early Australia, and she also received the Order of Australia for her enormous contributions to her home country.

Customer Reviews

groundbreaking bio
This to date has been the best biography on L. M. Montgomery, as most of the others simply re-hash each other both in content and in photos. This one covers new ground though, and covers old ground in a new and more insightful and thorough way. I especially liked how Mollie Gillen brings out Maud's contradictory nature, showing us that the public Maud (cheerful dutiful wife of a minister) was often at odds with the private Maud, a woman who often felt repressed, depressed, and stressed over events in her life.

A new comprehensive biography for many years now been in the process of being written by Mary Rubio about the life of L. M. Montgomery, and I read somewhere that it's supposed to be published later this year. I can't wait. It'll be interesting to see how it stands against this book. I have high hopes.

David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness"

Not Very Well Written
As a big fan of L.M. Montgomery's books I looked forward to reading a book about her life hoping to get a better idea of what she might have been like. Perhaps it was the author's style of writing..lots of silly quotes about birds, trees, etc. Also very little about her family other than her husband's melancholy but hardly anything about her two sons. I hope the next bio will have more substance.