Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903

Twenty-two stories Montgomery placed in Canadian and American magazines while she was still unknown, living at Cavendish on Prince Edward Island. The range is wide: Christmas pieces (Aunt Cyrilla’s Christmas Basket, The Josephs’ Christmas, The Osborne’s Christmas), courtship tales such as A Sandshore Wooing and The Bride Roses, and comic turns like A Patent Medicine Testimonial, in which a farm girl shames her immovable Uncle Abimelech into paying for college by signing the family name over to a liniment advertisement. Most are set in rural Canada, on farms and along the shore, among relatives with long memories and firm opinions. The pleasure is watching a style assemble itself: the plain humour, the swerve into sentiment, the exact eye for household tyrants. Anne of Green Gables was still five years off.