This post is part of a series featuring individual members of the international, interdisciplinary editorial board of the Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies. Read about editorial board members' achievements and their reflections on L.M. Montgomery.
Carolyn Strom Collins is the author of companion books to Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, Little Women, and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books. She is also the compiler and editor of An Annotated Bibliography of L. M. Montgomery's Short Stories and Poems; A Guide to L. M. Montgomery's Story and Poem Scrapbooks; After Many Years (a volume of Montgomery's previously unknown stories); and Anne of Green Gables: The Original Manuscript. She has presented papers on Montgomery's books, poems and stories, family history, and scrapbooks at most L. M. Montgomery international symposia. She founded and serves on the board of the Friends of the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island and the L.M. Montgomery Literary Society (LMMLS). She co-edits the LMMLS's e-newsletter, The Shining Scroll. Collins was on staff at the L. M. Montgomery Heritage Museum in Park Corner, PEI, for many years.
We asked the journal editorial board members some questions. Here are Carolyn Collins' responses:
What is Montgomery's greatest accomplishment?
Carolyn: There are many accomplishments, of course, but one is her perseverance--writing/publishing 21 novels, over 500 stories, over 500 poems, many articles and essays, keeping extensive journals--in spite of a great many hardships in her personal life.
Do you have a favourite line from any of Montgomery’s works?
Carolyn: Matthew says: "We might be some good to her." (Anne of Green Gables, Chapter 3)
Who do you think is the funniest character Montgomery has committed to paper?
Carolyn: "Granny" in Montgomery's story "Our Neighbors at the Tansy Patch," first published in Canadian Home Journal (Aug 1918) and re-published in After Many Years: Twenty-one "Long-Lost" Stories by L.M. Montgomery (Nimbus, 2017)
What is the best intertextual moment you have come across?
Carolyn: Seeing Anne of Green Gables quoted in Louise Penny's A Better Man (Macmillan/St. Martin's, 2019): "I'm well in body [but] considerably rumpled in spirit." (Chapter 12)