L.M. Montgomery's Complete Journals Books in Order

L.M. Montgomery’s Complete Journals presents the author’s life through her own sustained record of it. Unlike the novels about Anne Shirley or Emily Starr, these volumes concern the person who created those characters: her work, relationships, reading, ambitions and changing circumstances. The editions restore journal material beyond the earlier selections and provide annotations that help explain people and events. Their central continuity is a life moving through time, with the same writer returning to her experiences and trying to give them shape on the page.

The opening volumes, The PEI Years, 1889-1900 and The PEI Years, 1901-1911, follow Montgomery before and during the beginning of her literary fame. Prince Edward Island supplies familiar landscapes and close personal connections, but the journals also record ambitions that reach beyond it. The later island years include her work in Halifax, the death of her grandmother, her marriage and the publication of Anne of Green Gables. Reading these events within a longer personal record gives them a context that a brief account of her career cannot provide.

The person writing the journals is also deciding how her life will be remembered.

The Ontario volumes continue after Montgomery’s marriage and move into the responsibilities of family and community life. The Ontario Years, 1911-1917 begins this phase, with later volumes following the war’s aftermath and the following decades. The change of province is therefore more than a change of scenery. Her writing career continues alongside expectations attached to being a minister’s wife, personal concerns and the demands of everyday life. Public events enter a record that remains grounded in individual reactions rather than a historian’s later overview.

These are annotated editions of personal writing, so their texture differs from a conventional biography. Reflections on books, nature and other people sit beside repeated worries and ordinary incidents. Photographs, captions and other material in the early complete editions also show how Montgomery assembled a visual record alongside the words. The additional entries allow recurring concerns to remain visible instead of reducing each period to its most dramatic events. At the same time, a journal is a particular person’s account, and its omissions and self-presentation are part of what readers encounter.

The clearest route is chronological, starting with the first PEI volume and following the dates in the subtitles into the Ontario years. The earlier Selected Journals offer a shorter editorial selection, while the Complete Journals retain a fuller record of the periods they cover. Readers interested in the fiction will find the work in the context of its author’s life, while those interested in personal history can follow a writer’s changing understanding of her world.