L. M. Montgomery. Rilla of Ingleside, autograph manuscript. Leaskdale, Ontario, 1919-1920. L. M. Montgomery Collection, Archival and Special Collections, University of Guelph Library (XZ5 MS A004).

Literary editor and writer Donald G. French, in an article published in The Globe (Toronto) in 1921, evinced great appreciation for Rilla of Ingleside, L. M. Montgomery’s tenth novel. French wrote “[Montgomery] has imaginative and creative gifts, and she uses them in enabling us to see the beauty, the humor, and the pathos that lies about our daily lives.”

Montgomery’s masterpiece allows us to experience the range of emotions associated with the tumultuous years of the First World War: love, enthusiasm, anxiety, grief, and anger. Since its publication in 1921, the novel has never been out of print, and the story is still relevant as we approach the one hundredth anniversary of the end of the Great War. How can we discover Montgomery's creative processes in writing Rilla? 

The two autograph manuscripts from the L. M. Montgomery Collection in Archival & Special Collections at the University of Guelph in the following sections of the exhibit document by erasures, additions, and emendations the thoughts of the author in the act of composition.