The L.M. Montgomery Collection at the University of Guelph

Abstract

With just over six hundred items, the L.M. Montgomery Collection in the University of Guelph Library special collections has become an essential national repository for Montgomery studies and an important supplement to the Library’s extensive Canadian Scottish collections. These materials all came to the University of Guelph library through negotiations initiated and assisted by Dr. Mary Rubio of Guelph’s English Department, who had sought out Montgomery’s surviving son and literary executor, Dr. Stuart Macdonald (1915–1982), and who recognized the historical and literary value of his private collection of Montgomery’s journals, scrapbooks, reading library, and personal memorabilia. The University of Guelph purchased Montgomery’s personal diaries and scrapbooks from Dr. Macdonald in 1981, and a second large collection of material was purchased from his widow, Ruth Macdonald, following his death in 1982. In 2000, the manuscript of Rilla of Ingleside, thought to have been lost, was donated to the collection by Emily and Murray Woods. Subsequent additions to the collection (letters, postcards, and variant editions of Montgomery’s works) from a number of private donors have continued to make it grow. In 2008, the scholarly context of the collections has been much enriched by Dr. Rubio’s donation of her personal collection of critical and creative materials related to L.M. Montgomery, which were the basis of her recent biography, Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings