THE SELECTED JOURNALS OF L.M. MONTGOMERY. VOLUME IV: 1929-1935. by Rubio, Mary & Waterston, Elizabeth, editors. (L.M. Montgomery - Lucy Maud Montgomery.) - 1998

Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998. 439 pp, 9 1/4" H. B&w photographs, maps. The fourth volume of 'The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery' "covers a tumultuous period in the writer's life. By 1929 she was 54 years old and known world-wide as the author of 'Anne of Green Gables' and many other books, yet this was also a time of numerous setbacks: the stock market crash, a drop in royalties from her many books, the need to provide her two sons with a university education while her husband's modest church salary was often in arrears, and the fact that many loans she made to friends and family were not repaid. She faced personal crises in relations with her sons and her husband and there was furious controvery in her husband's parish, Norval Presbyterian Church. She also felt concerns over her own mental state and she became the unwilling object of a young woman's declarations of passionate love. Yet this was not a period without joy: the volume opens with happy travels to Prince Edward Island and western Canada and ends with her looking forward with great excitement to a new life in Toronto. Besides providing an intimate look into the daily life of one of the world's best-loved authors, these journals can also be read as a fascinating social history of the early twentieth century. For example, Montgomery's health concerns provide intriguing insights into the state of medical practices. Readers may shudder slightly when a bout of asthma is treated with strychnine tablets or a 'bad chill' brings out a compound of arsenic." Minor wrinkling at top of spine. Dust jacket has light wrinkling at top of spine.. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good+/Very Good.