7 best short stories by L. M. Montgomery E-Book

L.M. Montgomery

• Herausgeber: Tacet Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Welcome to the 7 Best Short Stories book series, were we present to you the best works of remarkable authors.This edition is dedicated to L. M. Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables. The book was an immediate success. Anne Shirley, an orphaned girl, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following.Works selected for this book:A Christmas Mistake; Miss Calista's Peppermint Bottle; The Way of the Winning of Anne; The Red Room; A Strayed Allegiance; A Case of Trespass; In Spite of Myself.If you appreciate good literature, be sure to check out the other Tacet Books titles!

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

The Author

In Spite of Myself

A Case of Trespass

A Strayed Allegiance

The Red Room

The Way of the Winning of Anne

Miss Calista's Peppermint Bottle

A Christmas Mistake

About the Publisher

The Author

L.M. Montgomery (Lucy Maud Montgomery) was born in Clifton (now New London), Prince Edward Island, on November 30, 1874, to Hugh John Montgomery and Clara Woolner Macneill. When Montgomery was 21 months old, her mother died of tuberculosis. Her father left her in the care of her mother's parents, Alexander and Lucy Woolner Macneill of Cavendish, and moved to western Canada, where he eventually settled in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and remarried. 

As an only child living with an elderly couple, Montgomery found companionship in her imagination, nature, books, and writing. When she was nine, she began writing poetry and keeping a journal. She also spent time with her Uncle John and Aunt Annie Campbell (her mother's sister), and their family in Park Corner. There she spent many happy days, playing with her cousins and visiting her paternal grandfather, Senator Donald Montgomery, who lived close to the Campbells.  She loved her Cavendish home and Silver Bush (as the Campbell farm was called) in Park Corner. 

At the age of six, she began attending the one-room school near her grandparents' home in Cavendish. She completed her early education there, with the exception of one year (1890-1891) which she spent in Prince Albert with her father and his wife, Mary Anne McRae. While in Prince Albert, she achieved her first publication - a poem entitled "On Cape LeForce" published by a Prince Edward Island  newspaper, The Patriot. In September of 1891, she returned to Cavendish, too late to go to school that year, but she completed grade ten in 1892-1893. The following year (1893-1894), she studied for a teacher's license at Prince of Wales College, completing the two-year course in one year and graduating with honours.

During her brief teaching career, Montgomery taught at three Island schools: Bideford, Belmont, and Lower Bedeque respectively. She left teaching for one year (1895-1896) to study selected courses in English literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, becoming one of the few women of her time to seek higher education. It was during her stay at Dalhousie that she received the first payments for her writing.

In 1898, while Montgomery was teaching in Lower Bedeque, her Grandfather Macneill died suddenly. She returned to Cavendish immediately to take care of her grandmother who otherwise would have had to leave her home. She remained with her grandmother for the next thirteen years, with the exception of a nine-month period in 1901-1902 when she worked as a proof-reader for The Daily Echo in Halifax. 

During her years in Cavendish, Montgomery continued to write and sent off numerous poems, stories, and serials to Canadian, British, and American magazines. Despite many  rejections, she eventually commanded a comfortable income from her writing. In 1899, she earned $96.88 - not much by today's standards but a nice sum at the turn of the century. Her earnings from her writing increased to $500 in 1903.

In 1905, she wrote her first and most famous novel, Anne of Green Gables. She sent the manuscript to several publishers, but, after receiving rejections from all of them, she put it away in a hat box. In 1907, she found the manuscript again, re-read it, and decided to try again to have it published. Anne of Green Gables was accepted by the Page Company of Boston, Massachusetts and published in 1908. An immediate best-seller, the book marked the beginning of Montgomery's successful career as a novelist.  

After Grandmother Macneill died in March of 1911, Montgomery married the Reverend Ewan Macdonald, to whom she had been secretly engaged since 1906, on July 5, 1911. Prior to her engagement to Macdonald, she had had two romantic involvements: an unhappy engagement to her third cousin Edwin Simpson, of Belmont, and a brief, but passionate romantic attachment to Herman Leard, of Lower Bedeque.

After their marriage, Montgomery and Macdonald moved to Leaskdale, Ontario, where Macdonald was minister in the Presbyterian church. She had three sons: Chester (1912), Hugh (stillborn in 1914), and Stuart (1915); assisted her husband in his pastoral duties; ran their home; and continued to write best-selling novels as well as short stories and poems. She faithfully recorded entries in her journals and kept up an enormous correspondence with friends, family, and fans. Maud Montgomery Macdonald did not live on Prince Edward Island again, returning only for vacations.  

Montgomery was a very sensitive and intelligent woman who suffered deeply from events that affected her personally and the world. In her journals, she expressed her pain at the death of her infant son Hugh, the horrors of the First World War, the death of her beloved cousin Frede Campbell, and the discovery that her husband suffered from religious melancholia. But despite these and other problems, she continued to write, expressing her love of life, nature, and beauty in her fiction, journals, and letters. 

In 1926, the Montgomery Macdonalds moved to Norval, Ontario, where they stayed until Macdonald resigned from the ministry in 1935. They then moved to Toronto, where they could be close to their sons. Maud Montgomery Macdonald died in Toronto, Ontario, on April 24, 1942; Ewan Macdonald died in November 1943. In death, Montgomery returned to her beloved Prince Edward Island, where she was buried in the Cavendish cemetery, close to the site of her old home.

In Spite of Myself

My trunk was packed and I had arranged with my senior partner—I was the junior member of a law firm—for a month's vacation. Aunt Lucy had written that her husband had gone on a sea trip and she wished me to superintend the business of his farm and mills in his absence, if I could arrange to do so. She added that "Gussie" thought it was a pity to trouble me, and wanted to do the overseeing herself, but that she—Aunt Lucy—preferred to have a man at the head of affairs.

I had never seen my step-cousin, Augusta Ashley, but I knew, from Aunt Lucy's remarks concerning her, pretty much what sort of person she was—just the precise kind I disliked immeasurably. I had no idea what her age was, but doubtless she was over thirty, tall, determined, aggressive, with a "faculty" for managing, a sharp, probing nose, and a y-formation between her eyebrows. I knew the type, and I was assured that the period of sojourn with my respected aunt would be one of strife between Miss Ashley and myself.

I wrote to Aunt Lucy to expect me, made all necessary arrangements, and went to bid Nellie goodbye. I had made up my mind to marry Nellie. I had never openly avowed myself her suitor, but we were cousins, and had grown up together, so that I knew her well enough to be sure of my ground. I liked her so well that it was easy to persuade myself that I was in love with her. She more nearly fulfilled the requirements of my ideal wife than anyone I knew. She was pleasant to look upon, without being distractingly pretty; small and fair and womanly. She dressed nicely, sang and played agreeably, danced well, and had a cheerful, affectionate disposition. She was not alarmingly clever, had no "hobbies," and looked up to me as heir to all the wisdom of the ages—what man does not like to be thought clever and brilliant? I had no formidable rival, and our families were anxious for the match. I considered myself a lucky fellow. I felt that I would be very lonely without Nellie when I was away, and she admitted frankly that she would miss me awfully. She looked so sweet that I was on the point of asking her then and there to marry me. Well, fate interfered in the guise of a small brother, so I said goodbye and left, mentally comparing her to my idea of Miss Augusta Ashley, much to the latter's disadvantage.

When I stepped from the train at a sleepy country station next day I was promptly waylaid by a black-eyed urchin who informed me that Mrs. Ashley had sent him with an express wagon for my luggage, and that "Miss Gussie" was waiting with the carriage at the store, pointing down to a small building before whose door a girl was trying to soothe her frightened horse.

As I went down the slope towards her I noticed she was tall—quite too tall for my taste. I dislike women who can look into my eyes on a level—but I had to admit that her form was remarkably symmetrical and graceful. She put out her hand—it was ungloved and large, but white and firm, with a cool, pleasant touch—and said, with a composure akin to indifference, "Mr. Carslake, I presume. Mother could not come to meet you, so she sent me. Will you be kind enough to hold my horse for a few minutes? I want to get something in the store." Whereupon she calmly transferred the reins to me and disappeared.

At the time she certainly did not impress me as pretty, yet neither could I call her plain. Taken separately, her features were good. Her nose was large and straight, the mouth also a trifle large but firm and red, the brow wide and white, shadowed by a straying dash of brown curl or two. She had a certain cool, statuesque paleness, accentuated by straight, fine, black brows, and her eyes were a bluish grey; but the pupils, as I afterward found out, had a trick of dilating into wells of blackness which, added to a long fringe of very dark lashes, made her eyes quite the most striking feature of her face. Her expression was open and frank, and her voice clear and musical without being sweet. She looked about twenty-two.

At the time I did not fancy her appearance and made a mental note to the effect that I would never like Miss Ashley. I had no use for cool, businesslike women—women should have no concern with business. Nellie would never have troubled her dear, curly head over it.

Miss Ashley came out with her arms full of packages, stowed them away in the carriage, got in, told me which road to take, and did not again speak till we were out of the village and driving along a pretty country lane, arched over with crimson maples and golden-brown beeches. The purplish haze of a sunny autumn day mellowed over the fields, and the bunch of golden rod at my companion's belt was akin to the plumed ranks along the fences. I hazarded the remark that it was a fine day; Miss Ashley gravely admitted that it was. Then a deep smile seemed to rise somewhere in her eyes and creep over her face, discovering a dimple here and there as it proceeded.

"Don't let's talk about the weather—the subject is rather stale," she said. "I suppose you are wondering why on earth Mother had to drag you away out here. I tried to show her how foolish it was, but I didn't succeed. Mother thinks there must be a man at the head of affairs or they'll never go right. I could have taken full charge easily enough; I haven't been Father's 'boy' all my life for nothing. There was no need to take you away from your business."

I protested. I said I was going to take a vacation anyway, and business was not pressing just then. I also hinted that, while I had no doubt of her capacity, she might have found the duties of superintendent rather arduous.

"Not at all," she said, with a serenity that made me groan inwardly. "I like it. Father always said I was a born business manager. You'll find Ashley's Mills very quiet, I'm afraid. It's a sort of charmed Sleepy Hollow. See, there's home," as we turned a maple-blazoned corner and looked from the crest of one hill across to that of another. "Home" was a big, white, green-shuttered house buried amid a riot of autumn colour, with a big grove of dark green spruces at the back. Below them was a glimpse of a dark blue mill pond and beyond it long sweeps of golden-brown meadow land, sloping up till they dimmed in horizon mists of pearl and purple.

"How pretty," I exclaimed admiringly.

"Isn't it?" said Gussie proudly. "I love it." Her pupils dilated into dark pools, and I rather unwillingly admitted that Miss Ashley was a fine-looking girl.

As we drove up Aunt Lucy was standing on the steps of the verandah, over whose white roof trailed a luxuriant creeper, its leaves tinged by October frosts into lovely wine reds and tawny yellows. Gussie sprang out, barely touching my offered hand with her fingertips.

"There's Mother waiting to pounce on you and hear all the family news," she said, "so go and greet her like a dutiful nephew."

"I must take out your horse for you first," I said politely.