[14] During solitary walks through the peaceful island countryside, Montgomery started to experience what she called "the flash"—a moment of tranquility and clarity when she felt emotional ecstasy and was inspired by the awareness of a higher spiritual power running through nature.

I cannot tell what possessed me—I seemed swayed by a power utterly beyond my control—I turned my head—our lips met in one long passionate pressure—a kiss of fire and rapture such I had never experienced or imagined.

[28] In Victorian Canada, premarital sex was rare for women, and Montgomery had been brought up in a strict Presbyterian household where she had been taught that all who "fornicated" were among the "damned" who burned in Hell forever, a message she had taken to heart.

[citation needed] The Canadian press made much of Montgomery's roots on Prince Edward Island, which was portrayed as a charming part of Canada where the people retained old-fashioned values and everything moved at a much slower pace.

[34] The American press suggested that all of Canada was backward and slow, arguing that a book like Anne of Green Gables was only possible in a rustic country like Canada, where the people were nowhere near as advanced as in the U.S.[34] Typical of the American coverage of Montgomery was a 1911 newspaper article in Boston, which asserted:Recently a new and exceedingly brilliant star arose on the literacy horizon in the person of a previously unknown writer of "heart interest" stories, Miss Lucy M. Montgomery, and presently the astronomers located her in the latitude of Prince Edward Island.

[38] In emphasizing Montgomery's modesty and desire to remain anonymous, the author was portraying her as the ideal woman writer, who wanted to preserve her femininity by not embarking on a professional career, writing only a part-time job at best.

"[40] After their marriage, she took her honeymoon in England and Scotland, the latter a particular point of interest to her, as it was for her the "Old Country"—the romantic land of castles, rugged mountains, shining glens, lakes and waterfalls that was her ancestral homeland.

[44] Her youth had been spent among a Scottish-Canadian family where Scottish tales, myths, and legends had often been recounted, and Montgomery used this background to create the character of 14-year-old Sara Stanley, a skilled storyteller who was an "idealized" version of her adolescent self.

[44] The character of Peter Craig in The Story Girl very much resembles Herman Leard, the great love of Montgomery's life, the man she wished she had married, but did not, right down to having blond curly hair.

[40] Montgomery had worked as a Sunday School teacher at her husband's church, and many of the men from Uxbridge county who were killed or wounded in the war had once been her students, causing her much emotional distress.

The Reverend Ewen Macdonald, a good Calvinist who believed in predestination, had become convinced that he was not one of "the Elect" chosen by God to go to Heaven, leading him to spend hours depressed and staring into space.

In February 1920, Montgomery wrote in her diary about having to deal with:A letter from some pathetic ten-year old in New York who implores me to send her my photo because she lies awake in her bed wondering what I look like.

[40] Montgomery concluded:My love for Hermann Leard, though so incomplete, is ... a memory which I would not barter for anything save the lives of my children and the return of Frede [Frederica Campbell MacFarlane, her best friend].

[68] Page had a well-deserved reputation as one of the most tyrannical figures in American publishing, a bully with a ferocious temper who signed his authors to exploitative contracts and liked to humiliate his subordinates, including his mild-mannered younger brother George, in public.

Montgomery hired a lawyer in Boston and sued Page in the Massachusetts Court of Equity for illegally withholding royalties due her and for selling the U.S. rights to Anne's House of Dreams, which he did not possess.

[15] In 1925, a Massachusetts court ruled in favour of Montgomery against her publisher, Louis Coues Page, as the judge found that he had systemically cheated her out of the profits from the Anne books since 1908.

[83] Page waged a campaign of harassment against Montgomery, sending her telegrams accusing her of causing his brother's death and the subsequent mental breakdown of his widow by defeating him in court, asking her if she was pleased with what she had allegedly done.

[89] At the same time, she complained in her diary her husband had a "medieval mind" when it came to women; to him: "A woman is a thing of no importance intellectually -- the plaything and servant of man -- and couldn't possibly do anything that would be worthy of a real tribute.

"[89] In 1926, the family moved into the Norval Presbyterian Charge, in present-day Halton Hills, Ontario, where today the Lucy Maud Montgomery Memorial Garden can be seen from Highway 7.

[95] In 1935, upon her husband's retirement, Montgomery moved to Swansea, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, buying a house that she named Journey's End, situated on Riverside Drive along the east bank of the Humber River.

[97] Writing kept up Montgomery's spirits as she battled depression while taking various pills to improve her mood, but in public she presented a happy, smiling face, giving speeches to various professional groups all over Canada.

[98] At the Toronto Book Fair, held on November 9, 1936, to promote Canadian literature, Montgomery met the pseudo-Ojibwe author and environmentalist Grey Owl.

"[101] Montgomery liked Grey Owl's speech the same evening stating that Canada's "greatest asset is her forest lands" and that most Canadians were too proud of "skyscrapers on Yonge Street" rather than the "natural resources we are destroying as fast as we can".

Mackenzie King scheduled a referendum for April 27, 1942, to ask the voters to release him from his promise to only send volunteers overseas, which Montgomery alluded to in her letter mentioning "conscription will come in."

Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre speculates that the book's dark tone and anti-war message (Anne speaks very bitterly of WWI in one passage) may have made the volume unsuitable to publish in the midst of the Second World War.

[106][107] However, in September 2008, her granddaughter, Kate Macdonald Butler, revealed that Montgomery suffered from depression—possibly as a result of caring for her mentally ill husband for decades—and may have ended her life through a drug overdose.

[114] Since the late 1970s - and in earnest since the publication of Akin to Anne in 1988 - dozens of Montgomery's short stories, many of which were only published once in magazine format in the early 20th century and unavailable in the decades that followed, have been compiled into a variety of themed omnibuses.

For example, every year, thousands of Japanese tourists "make a pilgrimage to a green-gabled Victorian farmhouse in the town of Cavendish on Prince Edward Island.

"[121] The British scholar Faye Hammill observed that Montgomery is an author overshadowed by her creation as licence plates on Prince Edward Island bear the slogan "P.E.I.

On May 15, 1975, the Post Office Department issued a stamp to "Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables" designed by Peter Swan and typographed by Bernard N. J. Reilander.