Have you ever wondered what inspired your favorite classic novelist to write their stories? What was happening in their lives to inspire their famous works? What was happening in the world at the time that they wrote those stories you love?
Join Host Bree Carlile while she helps to answer some of the questions you have always had about your favorite classic novelists.
For the next few weeks we will talk about the life of Lucy Maud Montgomery. What inspired her to write Anne of Green Gables? What else was happening in the world at the time?
Come with us as we release new episodes with the launch of each new author on the Bite at a Time Books Podcast, detailing the life and history at the time of your favorite authors.
Follow, rate, and review Bite at a Time Books Behind the Books where we go behind the scenes of what inspired your favorite authors to write your favorite classics. Available wherever you listen to podcasts.
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If you would also like to hear a story by the author we are currently featuring, check out the Bite at a Time Books daily podcast where we read one bite (chapter) a day of your favorite classics, wherever you listen to podcasts, right now we are reading Jane Eyre.
Information for today's episode came from Wikipedia, don't judge us, we just want to give you a brief glimpse into the life. Thanks!
Transcripts
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welcome to bite at a time.
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Books behind the story where we answer the questions you have about your favorite classic authors.
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What inspired your favorite author to write their novels?
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What was going on in the world at the time follow along with us as we tell you what was happening in the world while your favorite authors wrote your favorite classics?
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My name is bree Carlisle and I love to read and wanted to share my passion with listeners like you today.
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We'll be talking about the published books and suitors of lucy maud Montgomery.
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Upon leaving Dalhousie, Montgomery worked as a teacher in various Prince Edward Island schools, though she did not enjoy teaching, it afforded her time to write.
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Beginning in 1897, her short stories were published in magazines and newspapers.
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A prolific writer, Montgomery published over 100 stories between 1897 and 1907.
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During her teaching years, Montgomery had numerous love interests as a highly fashionable young woman.
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She had slim good looks, and when the Attention of several young men in 1889, at 14, Montgomery began a relationship with the cavendish boy Nate Lockhart to her.
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The relationship was merely a humorous and witty friendship.
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It ended abruptly when Montgomery refused his marriage proposal.
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The early 1890s brought unwelcome advances from john a mustard and Will Pritchard Mustard, her teacher quickly became her suitor.
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He tried to impress her with his knowledge of religious matters.
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His best topics of conversation were his thoughts on predestination and other dry points of theology which helped little appeal for Montgomery during the period, when Mustard's interest became more pronounced, Montgomery found a new interest in Prichard, the brother of her friend, Laura Pritchard.
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This friendship was more amiable, but he too, felt for Montgomery more than she did for him.
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When Pritchard sought to take their friendship further, Montgomery resisted.
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She refused both marriage proposals.
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Mustard was too narrow minded, and she considered Pritchard merely a good chum.
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She ended the period of flirtation when she moved to Prince Edward Island.
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She and Pritchard continued to Correspond for over six years until he died of influenza in 18 97.
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In 18 90 seven, Montgomery received a proposal from Edwin Simpson.
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A student in french river near Cavendish.
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She wrote that she accepted his proposal out of a desire for love and protection, and because she felt her prospects were rather poor, Montgomery came to dislike Simpson, whom she regarded as intolerably self centered and vain to the point of feeling nauseated in his presence.
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While teaching in lower Bedeck, she had a brief but passionate affair with Herman leered.
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A member of the family with which she boarded, leered himself, was engaged to neighbor Eddie Sherman.
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While involved with Montgomery of the men she loved.
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It was leered.
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She loved the most writing in her diary.
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Herman suddenly bent his head, and his lips touched my face.
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I cannot tell what possessed me.
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I seemed swayed by a power utterly beyond my control.
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I turned my head.
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Our lips met In one long, passionate pressure.
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A kiss of fire and rapture, such as I had never experienced or imagined.
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It's kisses at the best left me cold as ice!
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Herman sent flame through every fiber of my being.
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On April 8, 1898, Montgomery wrote.
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She had to stay faithful to Simpson for the sake of my self respect.
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I must not stoop to any sort of an affair with another man.
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She then wrote, If I had, or rather, if I could have kept this resolve, I would have saved myself incalculable suffering for it was but a few days later that I found myself face to face with the burning consciousness that I loved.
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Herman leered with a wild, passionate, unreasoning love that dominated my entire being and possessed me like a flame.
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I love!
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I could neither quell nor control a love that in its intensity seemed a little short of absolute madness.
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Madness!
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Yes.
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In victorian Canada premarital sex was rare for women, although it was common for unmarried men seeking sex to visit brothels, and Montgomery had been brought up in a strict presbyterian household, where she had been taught that all who fornicated were among the dam to burn in hell forever!
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A message she had taken to heart.
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Despite this, she often invited, leered into her bedroom when everybody else was out.
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And though she refused to have sex with him as she wanted to be a virgin bride.
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She, and leered, engaged in kissing and preliminary lovemaking.
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Montgomery called leered in her diary only a very nice, attractive Young animal, albeit one with magnetic blue eyes, following objections from her family and friends that leered was not good enough for her.
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Montgomery broke off her relationship with him.
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He died shortly afterwards of the flu In 1898.
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After much unhappiness and disillusionment, Montgomery broke off her engagement to Simpson.
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She ceased to seek romantic love.
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Montgomery was greatly upset when she learned of Leonard's Death in June 1899.
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Writing in her diary, it is easier to think him is dead.
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Mine, all mine and death as he never could be in life.
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Mine when no other women could ever lie on his heart or kiss his lips.
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Erstwhile fiancee, Eddie Schumann died in 1909 In 1898, Montgomery moved back to Cavendish to live with her widowed grandmother for a nine month period between 1901 and 1900 two.
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She worked in Halifax as a substitute proof reader for the newspapers, Morning Chronicle and The Daily Echo.
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Montgomery was inspired to write her first books during this time until her grandmother's death in March 1911, Montgomery stayed in Cavendish to take care of her.
