A Name for Herself
Page 36
TABLE 2 Early work published as “L.M. Montgomery,” 1891–1897
TITLE/TYPE PERIODICAL/LOCATION/DATE
“From Prince Albert to P.E. Island” (essay)* Daily Patriot (Charlottetown), 31 October 1891
“The Usual Way” (playlet)* The College Record (Charlottetown), March 1894
“Extracts from the Diary of a Second Class Mouse” (sketch)* The College Record (Charlottetown), April 1894
“High School Life in Saskatchewan” (essay)* The College Record (Charlottetown), May 1894
“Our Practical Joke” (story) Golden Days for Boys and Girls (Philadelphia), 8 August 1896
“I Wonder” (poem) The Ladies’ Journal (Toronto), September 1896
“The Missing Pony” (story) Golden Days for Boys and Girls (Philadelphia), 17 October 1896
“Home from Town” (poem) American Agriculturist (Springfield, MA), 28 November 1896
“The New Moon” (poem) The Ladies’ Journal (Toronto), January 1897
“Riding to Church” (poem) American Agriculturist (Springfield, MA), 20 February 1897
“The Prize in Elocution” (story)† Times (Philadelphia), 7 March 1897
“The Gable Window” (poem) The Ladies’ Journal (Toronto), April 1897
“Love and Lacework” (poem) The Ladies’ Journal (Toronto), May 1897
“Apple-Blossoms” (poem) The Ladies’ World (New York), May 1897
“The Extra French Examination” (story) Times (Philadelphia), 16 May 1897
“Detected by the Camera” (story) Times (Philadelphia), 27 June 1897
“In Haying Time” (poem) The Ladies’ Journal (Toronto), July 1897
“A Case of Trespass” (story) Golden Days for Boys and Girls (Philadelphia), 24 July 1897
“The Marked Door” (poem) The Ladies’ Journal (Toronto), August 1897
“The Violet Challie Dress” (story) Times (Philadelphia), 15 August 1897
“At the Dance” (poem) The Ladies’ Journal (Toronto), September 1897
“The Gold-Link Bracelet” (story) Times (Philadelphia), 26 September 1897
“When I Go Home” (poem) The Congregationalist (Boston), 11 November 1897
“If Love Should Come” (poem) Munsey’s Magazine (New York), December 1897
“Wanted – A Little Girl” (poem) Portland (ME) Transcript, 15 December 1897
* Appearing in this volume.
† Attributed erroneously to “L.W. Montgomery.”
In this list of names used during her first dozen years as a professional writer, there is a mix of gender-neutral names involving initials and gender-specific names such as “Belinda Bluegrass” and “Enid” (used to sign two entries, included in this volume, to an 1896 contest by the Evening Mail of Halifax on “Which Has the Most Patience under the Ordinary Cares and Trials of Life – Man or Woman?”) and “Cynthia” (which she selected for both the byline and the main character in her newspaper column, “Around the Table,” published in the Halifax Daily Echo in 1901–1902). Although she mentioned many of these early publications in her journals and in retrospective accounts of her career, she did not record her rationale either for using a pen name or for selecting particular pen names for particular contributions to the periodical market. It is therefore unclear whether Montgomery’s choices of pen names were solely her own or whether they were the suggestions or requirements of editors who feared she was publishing too much or for too many markets simultaneously. It does not appear, for instance, that Montgomery decided to use separate authorial identities for her work for children and her work for adults or for work she deemed to be of a different calibre. Indeed, by the time she had settled on “L.M. Montgomery” as her consistent pen name in the early years of the twentieth century, her output had risen: she published an annual average of thirteen poems and eleven stories between 1897 and 1900, an annual average of thirty-one poems and thirty stories between 1901 and 1904, and an annual average of twenty-seven poems and thirty-seven stories between 1905 and 1908.35
TABLE 3 L.M. Montgomery’s pseudonyms, 1895–1906
NAME TITLE/TYPE PERIODICAL/LOCATION/DATE
Maud Eglinton† “On the Gulf Shore” (poem) The Ladies’ Journal (Toronto), February 1895
Maud Cavendish “When the Apple-Blossoms Blow” (poem) The Ladies’ Journal (Toronto), June 1895
“A Baking of Gingersnaps” (story) The Ladies’ Journal (Toronto), July 1895
“Our Charivari” (story) Arthur’s Home Magazine (Philadelphia), April 1897;
Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 January 1923
Maud Cavindish “A Strayed Allegiance” (story) Arthur’s Home Magazine (Philadelphia), July 1897
“Buttercups” (poem) The Mayflower (Floral Park, NY), July 1899
Belinda Bluegrass “Which Has the Most Patience under the Ordinary Cares and Trials of Life – Man or Woman?” (poem)* Evening Mail (Halifax), February 1896 (exact date unknown)
Enid “Which Has the Most Patience under the Ordinary Cares and Trials of Life – Man or Woman?” (sketch)* Evening Mail (Halifax), February 1896 (exact date unknown)
L. “James Henry, Truant” (essay)* The Prince of Wales College Observer (Charlottetown), April 1896
L.M. “The Land of Some Day” (poem) The Prince of Wales College Observer (Charlottetown), April 1896
L.M.M. “Crooked Answers” (essay)* The Prince of Wales College Observer (Charlottetown), March 1896
“The Bad Boy of Blanktown School” (essay)* The Dalhousie Gazette (Halifax), 4 March 1896
“I’ve Something to Tell You, Sweet” (poem) The New York Family Story Paper, 30 July 1898
“Forever” (poem) The New York Family Story Paper, 12 November 1898
“Good-By” (poem) The New York Family Story Paper, 10 December 1898
Lucy M.
Montgomery “A Girl’s Place at Dalhousie College” (essay)* Halifax Herald, 29 April 1896
“Rain in the Woods” (poem) Sports Afield (Chicago), August 1899
M.L. Cavendish “In Spite of Myself” (story) Sunday Inter Ocean (Chicago), 5 July 1896
“Fisher Lassies” (poem) The Youth’s Companion (Boston), 30 July 1896
“The Apple-Picking Time” (poem) Golden Days for Boys and Girls (Philadelphia), 3 October 1896
M.M. “When She Was Here” (poem) The New York Family Story Paper, 7 October 1899
“A Half-Hour in an Old Cemetery” (essay)* Halifax Daily Echo, 26 September 1901; Morning Chronicle (Halifax), 27 September 1901
Cynthia “Around the Table” [35 instalments] (newspaper column)* Halifax Daily Echo, 28 September 1901–26 May 1902; 22 instalments also in Morning Chronicle (Halifax), 21 October 1901–27 May 1902
“Many Admiring Glances Bestowed upon Graduates” (essay)* Halifax Daily Echo, 30 April 1902
Joyce Cavendish Various titles (poems) See Table 4
Ella Montgomery “Last Night in Dreams” (poem) American Agriculturist (Springfield, MA), 10 November 1906
* Appearing in this volume.
† The name appears as “Eglington” in the publication, but in her scrapbook copy Montgomery crosses out the extraneous “g,” indicating that her intended name was “Eglinton.”
Yet there is a curious exception to this early twentieth-century development in Montgomery’s career: between March 1901 and March 1906, she published eighteen poems under the signature “Joyce Cavendish” in a single magazine, The New York Family Story Paper (see table 4). She also published in this periodical eight poems as “L.M. Montgomery,” three as “L.M.M.,” and one as “M.M.,” so it seems surprising that she would start publishing in this periodical under a new name, one that she does not appear to have used anywhere else – especially since the last two poems published under the byline “L.M. Montgomery” were within the span of time during which she published as “Joyce Cavendish.” These poems do not depart markedly from those she published under her own name, either in content or in form, so it does not appear as though she needed Joyce Cavendish to express what
she could not as L.M. Montgomery. It is also unclear why she continued to use this pseudonym several years after she had solidified her authorial identity as L.M. Montgomery.36
TABLE 4 Poems in The New York Family Story Paper, 1898–1906
NAME TITLE DATE
L.M. Montgomery “Dressing for the Ball” 26 February 1898
“The Perfume of Roses” 7 May 1898
“The Light in Mother’s Eyes” 31 December 1898
“Sweet Summer Days” 27 May 1899
“Assurance” 10 March 1900
“Night Watches” 28 July 1900
“I Have Buried My Dead” 12 October 1901
“The Love Potion” 20 January 1906
L.M.M. “I’ve Something to Tell You, Sweet” 30 July 1898
“Forever” 12 November 1898
“Good-By” 10 December 1898
M.M. “When She Was Here” 7 October 1899
Joyce Cavendish “Your Influence” 2 March 1901
“Come Where Violets Blow” 24 August 1901
“A Smile” 26 October 1901
“The Star thro’ the Pines” 4 January 1902
“Shall I Remember?” 1 November 1902
“Farewell and Welcome” 14 February 1903
“The Gray Silk Gown” 23 May 1903
“The Charm” 19 September 1903
“The Choice” 9 January 1904
“Jealousy” 5 March 1904
“On the Bridge” 11 June 1904
“When the Frogs Are Singing” 2 July 1904
“Air Castles” 24 September 1904
“The Name Tree” 11 March 1905
“The Water Nymph” 15 April 1905
“I Wonder If She Knows” 10 June 1905
“The Silent House” 19 August 1905
“To Phyllis” 31 March 1906
Although “Joyce Cavendish” is the last pseudonym listed in Lucy Maud Montgomery: A Preliminary Bibliography (1986), more recent findings add an unexpected epilogue to this aspect of Montgomery’s career. In a contribution to Storm and Dissonance: L.M. Montgomery and Conflict (2008), Gerson revealed the contents of a letter she had found in the Archives of Ontario in which Montgomery mentioned that she had submitted her poem “At the Long Sault” to a poetry contest sponsored by the Toronto Globe in 1908 – under the pseudonym “J.C. Neville.” Gerson added that she had also come across “Two Sides of a Life Story,” an undated and unidentified short story attributed to J.C. Neville, in a scrapbook of Montgomery’s otherwise not dedicated to her career, with no indication that Montgomery had claimed this piece as hers; while the shape of the clippings suggests publication in a newspaper rather than a magazine, there is no indication of the venue or the publication date.37 When I read this story in one of Montgomery’s scrapbooks housed at the University of Guelph archives, I was struck first of all by the blending of fiction and non-fiction – although it is clearly fiction, it uses the non-fiction forms of a woman’s diary and a man’s letter to tell the story – and second by the fact that the writing style strongly suggested that Montgomery had written it, notwithstanding the detail that the surname of the man Mrs. Fitzelroy wishes she had married is Cavendish. But how could I prove Montgomery had written it or that she had published work as “J.C. Neville”? For all I knew, Montgomery found this clipping somewhere, marvelled at the coincidence of its signature being the name she’d used once several years earlier for a poetry contest, and pasted it into her scrapbook. Even if I found other pieces attributed to “J.C. Neville,” how could I prove that they were really by L.M. Montgomery?
In October 2016, once the manuscript for this volume was well under way, I searched for “J.C. Neville” in a digital database subscribed to by the University of Toronto’s Robarts Library, and there, after sifting carefully through several unrelated results, I came across a poem attributed to J.C. Neville, entitled “Night in the Pastures,” published in the 26 August 1908 issue of the Boston magazine Zion’s Herald. Because I also had a working manuscript of Montgomery’s five hundred poems by that point, I quickly identified this poem as one published ten years earlier, in New England Farmer (Boston) – by L.M. Montgomery. Further hits revealed that this poem had then been reprinted, again attributed to J.C. Neville, in the Boston Daily Globe in October 1908 and in the Nebraska State Journal and the Postville Review of Iowa in December 1908. Some of Montgomery’s earliest pieces published under pseudonyms she had republished under her own name after the success of Anne of Green Gables (see table 5); this is the only known instance in which she did the reverse.
I cannot fathom why Montgomery republished this poem as J.C. Neville, especially in a periodical to which she was already a regular contributor under her own name, or, given that the poem appeared barely two months after the publication of Anne of Green Gables, why she apparently was not keen in this instance to use the sales success of her first book as a way to draw increased attention to her poetry. And unlike “Two Sides of a Life Story,” about a woman who is secretly miserable in her marriage and who regrets bitterly having forsaken the man she loved – a story from which understandably Montgomery would have wanted to distance herself not only as a celebrity author but also as the wife of a minister – “Night in the Pastures” does not contain any material that would seem to be too scandalous to come from the pen of L.M. Montgomery. But at least I could prove that Montgomery published work as J.C. Neville, which strengthens the connection between this short story and Montgomery as its author, and for that reason I include it in this volume. And in the meantime, the search for further J.C. Neville texts continues.
The publication of Anne of Green Gables in 1908 catapulted Montgomery from prolific freelance author of short stories and poems to bestselling novelist, but along with the rewards came some drawbacks. Commenting in a journal entry dated 1921 on the sale of a short story for which she had received almost ten times what she would have “in other years,” she noted that “after all it was not really for the story they paid the price but for the name, and that name was won by the long toil of the obscure years – a toil that blossoms now.”38 But there were several instances in which the circulation of her name and her work were decidedly out of her control, including the reprinting of her treatise “What to Teach Your Son,” part of “Half an Hour with Canadian Mothers” earlier in this volume, in at least three dozen newspapers across North America. A century before the creation of memes, shared on social media, that marry brief quotations from Anne of Green Gables with visually attractive backgrounds,39 four extracts from Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea circulated in North American newspapers, identifying the author’s name rather than the text in question. In this case, Montgomery’s name was seen to have greater recognition value than the titles of two of her bestselling books, troubling Faye Hammill’s assertion that Montgomery’s fame in the 1910s and the interwar years had “always been contingent on the much greater renown of her character Anne Shirley”:40
TABLE 5 Work published under multiple signatures
TITLE/TYPE SIGNATURE PERIODICAL/LOCATION/DATE
“When the Apple-Blossoms Blow” (poem) Maud Cavendish The Ladies’ Journal (Toronto), June 1895
L.M. Montgomery The American Messenger (New York), May 1910
“A Baking of Gingersnaps” (story) Maud Cavendish The Ladies’ Journal (Toronto), July 1895
Maud Cavendish The American Farmer (Baltimore), September 1895
L.M. Montgomery Western Christian Advocate (Cincinnati), 5 October 1910
“The Goose Feud” (story) Maud Cavendish Arthur’s Home Magazine (Philadelphia), April 1897
L.M. Montgomery Western Christian Advocate (Cincinnati), 22 July 1908
“Night in the Pastures” (poem) L.M. Montgomery New England Farmer (Boston), 22 October 1898
J.C. Neville Zion’s Herald (Boston), 26 August 1908
J.C. Neville Boston Daily Globe (Boston), 13 October 1908
J.C. Neville Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln), 25 December 1908
; J.C. Neville Postville (IA) Review, 25 December 1908