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Important Note: In this interview Caroline and I discuss mental illness in detail as it relates to Maud’s life, including suicide. Feel free to save this replay for later if this may be triggering. If you or anyone you know is struggling, the National Suicide Hotline is 988 or text HOME to 741741
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Helpful Links:
- Learn more about my dear friend Caroline Starr Rose & find all her books!
- Caroline Starr Rose on IM discussing her book May B.
- Caroline joined me virtually for my Live Anne of GG Storytime from Prince Edward Island
- An Evening on PEI with Dr. Kate Scarth, Chair of L.M. Montgomery Studies
- Share your takeaways from this deep dive in our forum!
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Video Highlights & More Links:
02: 25 – How Carrie and I first discovered Maud’s journals 25 years ago
- LMM’s journals (afflinks throughout)
- LMM: The Gift of Wings by Mary Henley Rubio
06: 30 – Anne of Green Gables publishing journey
13:00 – How common was Anne’s situation as an orphaned girl before Green Gables, being passed around as a nanny and neglected?
- Childhood and Charity in Nineteenth-Century British North America
- Children at Work, Canadian History Pre-Confederation
- Child Labour – The Canadian Encyclopedia
- May B. by Caroline Starr Rose
18:20 – Is there a character from Anne that most resembles Maud’s personality?
22:50 – What stood out to us both when we visited Green Gables?
- Video of Carrie & I at Lover’s Lane, Green Gables in 2016
- PEI tour I created in 2022 on my Instagram Stories highlights (set to the music from 1980s mini-series)
- Behind the scenes short FB video with George Campbell, Maud’s relative
32:40 – Did Montgomery have any bosom friends or kindred spirits of her own?
46:45 – Maud’s courtships
** NOTE: From this point forward, our discussion of mental illness intensifies **
57:00 – Maud’s engagement and marriage
1:01:05 – Did LM Montgomery’s husband have bipolar disorder?
- The Blue Castle, LMM
- Kilmeny of the Orchard, LMM
- Note that in this interview we use the term “manic-depressive,” which was commonly used in Maud’s lifetime (but now is the condition referred to as bipolar)
1:11:30 – Maud’s son Chester
1:19:10 – Maud’s son Stuart
- Note that I (Jamie) mistakenly attributed the poem Stuart mentioned to get his mother’s attention to Tennyson, but it was actually The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott, a whopping 30,000 words!!
1:24:45 – Maud’s personal mental health challenges
1:29:25 – What we know and don’t know re: Maud’s death in 1942 (age 67)
- The Blythes Are Quoted, LMM (published partially in 1974, fully in 2009)
- Anne of Windy Poplars, LMM (published 1936 at age 61)
- Anne of Ingleside, LMM (published 1939 at age 64)
1:45:30 – Ending with the light: “Take heart, my child”