filed under Books
Anne of Green Gables Author Commits Suicide
11:48PM ON
09/22/2008
BY
Matthew Lawrence
Okay, so she committed suicide sixty-six years ago, but still.
I remember Mrs. Murphy at Glen Hills Elementary reading Anne of Green Gables (and its first sequel, Anne of Avonlea) to my sixth-grade class. And, because I was an eleven-year old boy, I hated it and probably spent the whole time making boob and fart jokes. Also, I resented the fact that my entire childhood was spent reading stories about people that lived on farms. But a lot of the girls in my class liked the Anne books (and the Disney Channel adaptations that were running around that time), so I figured I’d mention that its author, Lucy Maud Montgomery, committed suicide in 1942.
In a letter this week to Canada’s Globe and Mail, Montgomery’s granddaughter revealed for the first time that her grandmother had given herself an overdose after years of depression. She says she is optimistic that the shame surrounding depression will soon be lifted. “I hope that by writing about my grandmother now,” she says, “there might be less secrecy and more awareness that will ease the unnecessary suffering so many people experience as a result of such depressions.”
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:46AM
chiz Says:
as a lover of the series, i am shocked!
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