Magic Island: The Fictions of L.M. Montgomery

To get your copy of "Magic Island: The Fictions of L.M. Montgomery" visit the Oxford University Press website here.

L.M. Montgomery grew up in Prince Edward Island, a real place of “politics and potatoes.” But it’s her fictional island, a richly textured imaginative landscape, that has captivated a world of readers since
1908, when Anne of Green Gables became the first of Montgomery’s long string of bestsellers.

In this wide ranging and highly readable book, Elizabeth Waterston uses the term “magic” to suggest that peculiar, indefinable combination of attributes that unpredictably results in creative genius. Montgomery’s intelligence, her drive, and her sense of humour are essential components of this success. Waterston also features what Montgomery called her “dream life,” a “strange inner life of fancy which had always existed side by side with my outer life.” This special ability to look beyond the veil, to access vibrant inner vistas, produced deceptively layered fictions out of a life that saw not just its share of both fame and ill fortune, but also what Waterston calls “dark passions.”

Designed to be read alongside the new biography of Montgomery by Mary Rubio, this is the first book to reinterpret Montgomery’s writing in light of important new information about her life. Each novel is discussed in terms of Montgomery’s private life, her back-ground reading and interests, and of course also as a creative work on its own.