L. M. Montgomery (1874–1942) is a classic author who excelled at writing beautiful prose with believable, likeable characters. She is most well known for her Anne of Green Gables series, and also wrote the Emily of New Moon series as well as many stand-alone novels. But the extent of her talent is really shown in her short stories, over five hundred stories published in journals and magazines over the course of her career. She was able to experiment with different genres, including ghost stories and mysteries, and many of these short story ideas would grow to become the basis of events and characters in her other novels.
The Classic L. M. Montgomery Short Story Collections
The success of the first two Anne books prompted Montgomery’s publisher to ask her to write a collection of short stories set in Avonlea. For The Chronicles of Avonlea (1912), Montgomery took some stories she had already written for magazines and rewrote them to feature Avonlea and some of the familiar Anne characters, including appearances by Anne herself. All of these stories, like most of Montgomery’s popular tales, center around characters desiring, fighting, and finding love.
The sequel, Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920), was a collection of short stories Montgomery deemed not good enough to go in the first collection. She even unsuccessfully sued her publisher to keep them from being published. Nevertheless, these stories feature locations and characters similar to her other stories and have the familiar Montgomery charm.
The Road to Yesterday (1974) was published posthumously by Montgomery’s son. These stories feature the familiar Avonlea and Prince Edward Island setting, and many of the stories feature Anne and Gilbert Blythe and their children.
In 1979, Catherine McLay selected several Montgomery short stories that had been previously published in magazines and edited them into The Doctor’s Sweetheart and Other Stories. These tales revolve around courtship and marriage.
The Rea Wilmshurst Short Story Collections
Rea Wilmshurst undertook the daunting but enjoyable task of collecting every L. M. Montgomery short story ever published. With the help of some of Montgomery’s own notes that tracked her voluminous short story output, Wilmshurst was able to track down over 400 short stories written from 1885 to 1941 and only before published in journals and magazines. After collecting these stories, Wilmshurst noticed that they could be grouped under general themes, and compiled her Montgomery short story collections accordingly:
- Akin to Anne: Tales of Other Orphans (1988)
- Along the Shore: Tales by the Sea (1989)
- Among the Shadows: Tales from the Darker Side (1990)
- After Many Days: Tales of Time Passed (1991)
- Against the Odds: Tales of Achievement (1993)
- At the Altar: Matrimonial Tales (1994)
- Across the Miles: Tales of Correspondence (1995)
- Christmas with Anne and Other Holiday Stories (1996)
The Enduring Popularity of L. M. Montgomery
Montgomery was a talented storyteller whose work extended beyond the familiar Anne of Green Gables books. Readers continue to enjoy Montgomery’s stories because of their charming characters, beautiful imagery, and clever plots. And thanks to editors such as Rea Wilmshurst, readers can now enjoy the range of Montgomery’s talent through her many short stories.
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