The Manuscript Montgomery Created
The Manuscript Montgomery Created
Elizabeth R. Epperly
Everything in the Anne of Green Gables manuscript rewards close reading. Looking at the deletions and insertions, seeing such things as where the names Laura and Gertrude are stricken through and Diana is settled on, we see Montgomery weighing the appropriateness of every word, sometimes writing quickly (with forward-slanting script and even flow of ink) and other times writing in a cramped, unevenly slanted hand that suggests hesitation and struggle.
Detail of page 46 of the manuscript, where Montgomery decided on Diana’s name. Click image to enlarge.
This manuscript (more accurately called a holograph, meaning all written by the person named as author) is a stack of now-thin pages that turns out to be two bundles: 716 (numbered) pages of story and 137 pages of “Notes,” passages Montgomery would add to the manuscript when she later typed it up.
L.M. Montgomery, in Leaskdale Ontario, the first home after her marriage. Click image to enlarge.
Many of the methods Montgomery used to create her first published novel 1 are ones she had developed in writing the hundreds of short stories and poems she successfully published in the 1890s and early 1900s.2 She continued to use the same planning and revising techniques for the next 19 novels published in her lifetime. Sixteen3 of the novel holographs have survived and invite study, but the Anne of Green Gables manuscript stands out for the evident pleasure Montgomery had in crafting it.
The very first paragraph introduces Montgomery’s two processes of revision: she spontaneously added, deleted, and corrected words while she wrote or when she revised, using carets and strike-throughs; and she created a system of additions involving a set of “Note” pages kept at the end of the manuscript, and, in the story text, a corresponding sequence of additions consisting of the word "Note" followed by an alphabet letter, with a number added to the letter after the full alphabet had been run through. So, after A through Z, she moved to A1, B1, and so on. The first page of Anne introduces “Note A” and “Note B.”
Never one to prize dates or numbers, Montgomery sometimes mis-numbered pages or even re-numbered them incorrectly. The total number of pages, rather than 853, is really 844 since Montgomery skipped some pages in numbering the story and the Note pages, but also added some “a” and “b” versions of single pages in both sections.4
More than 230 pages of the story manuscript, and some 50 pages of the Notes, are written on the backs (called “verso” pages) of some of Montgomery’s older story and poem manuscripts. These pages make compelling study in themselves; they also show early pen-names Montgomery tried and puzzling numbers in the margins of some stories.
Local insertions and added Notes alike reveal an artist’s eye and ear at work.
Detail of Montgomery’s edits from page 117b, Chapter 8. The passage shows inserted words and phrases as well as the addition of Note H4.
1 The first novel Montgomery wrote, called A Golden Carol, was not—thankfully, she said—published. She wrote it along formula lines, hoping for immediate sale. Later she realized that had she been successful with such a piece, she may never have written a real book, from her heart. No copy of A Golden Carol has been found. Back
2 Before June of 1905, Montgomery had published almost 200 poems and nearly as many short stories. An Annotated Bibliography of L.M. Montgomery’s Stories and Poems: Based on Rea Wilmshurst’s Original Chronological Bibliography in Lucy Maud Montgomery: A Preliminary Bibliography (1986). Compiled and edited by Carolyn Strom Collins. L.M. Montgomery Institute, 2016. See more Resources and Links. Back
3 The four novel manuscripts that have not survived: Anne of Avonlea (1909), Kilmeny of the Orchard (1910), The Story Girl (1911), and The Golden Road (1913). The Confederation Centre Art Gallery owns 15 of the novel manuscripts and the University of Guelph owns the manuscript of Rilla of Ingleside (1921), which was “discovered” and purchased in 1999. See also (editors) Elizabeth Waterston and Kate Waterston’s annotated transcription of Rilla: Readying Rilla: L.M. Montgomery’s Reworking of Rilla of Ingleside. Rock’s Mills Press, 2016. Inspired by them, Carolyn Strom Collins published her transcription: Anne of Green Gables: The Original Manuscript, Nimbus Publishing, 2019. Back
4 See Collins, "Introduction," Anne of Green Gables: The Original Manuscript, Nimbus Publishing, 2019, p. 5. Back
