'If you have the itch you might as well use it'

 

“You have the itch for writing born in you. It's quite incurable. What are you going to do?  You might as well use it?” – L.M. Montgomery

 

Montgomery, who rocketed to worldwide acclaim with her very first book Anne of Green Gables, was born in Canada in the Fall of 1874.  Over a 45-year writing career, she ended up publishing 20 novels, many featuring her lead character Anne Shirley.  She also wrote a remarkable 530 short stories, some 500 poems and 30 essays.   Anne of Green Gables has now sold more than 50 million copies and been published in two dozen languages.

 

By the time of her death in 1942, Montgomery also had been honored as the first Canadian female named a Fellow of England’s Royal Society of Arts and had been invested into the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) one of Britain’s highest honors. 

 

“We must have ideals and try to live up to them, even if we never quite succeed,” Montgomery once noted.   “Life would be a sorry business without them. With them it's grand and great.”