Editing Lucy Maud Montgomery (section)

===Published books and suitors===

[[File:Day256cgreengablesk.JPG|thumb|Birthplace of Lucy Maud Montgomery]]

Upon leaving Dalhousie, Montgomery worked as a teacher in various Prince Edward Island schools. Though she did not enjoy teaching, it afforded her time to write. Beginning in 1897, her short stories were published in magazines and newspapers. A prolific writer, Montgomery published over 100 stories between 1897 and 1907.

During her teaching years, Montgomery had numerous love interests. As a highly fashionable young woman, she had "slim, good looks"{{sfn|Bourgoin |1998 |p=136}} and won the attention of several young men. In 1889, at 14, Montgomery began a relationship with a Cavendish boy, Nate Lockhart. To her, the relationship was merely a humorous and witty friendship. It ended abruptly when Montgomery refused his marriage proposal.{{sfn|Heilbron|2001|p=118}}

The early 1890s brought unwelcome advances from John A. Mustard and Will Pritchard.{{sfn|Heilbron|2001|p=120}} Mustard, her teacher, quickly became her suitor; he tried to impress her with his knowledge of religious matters. His best topics of conversation were his thoughts on [[predestination]] and "other dry points of [[theology]]",{{sfn|Heilbron|2001|p=121}} which held little appeal for Montgomery. During the period when Mustard's interest became more pronounced, Montgomery found a new interest in Pritchard, the brother of her friend Laura Pritchard. This friendship was more amiable, but he too felt more for Montgomery than she did for him.{{sfn|Rubio|2008|p=63}} When Pritchard sought to take their friendship further, Montgomery resisted. She refused both marriage proposals; Mustard was too narrow-minded,{{sfn|Heilbron|2001|p=123}} and she considered Pritchard merely a good chum.{{sfn|Rubio|2008|p=17}} She ended the period of flirtation when she moved to Prince Edward Island. She and Pritchard continued to correspond for over six years, until he died of influenza in 1897.{{sfn|Heilbron|2001|p=122}}

In 1897, Montgomery received a proposal from Edwin Simpson,<ref name= lmbio/> a student in [[French River (Ontario)|French River]] near Cavendish.<ref>{{cite book |first=Jane |last=Urquhart |title=L.M. Montgomery |location=Toronto |publisher=Penguin Canada |date=2009 |page=24}}</ref>{{sfn|Heilbron|2001|p=127}} She wrote that she accepted his proposal out of a desire for "love and protection" and because she felt her prospects were rather poor.{{sfn|Rubio|2008|p=17}} Montgomery came to dislike Simpson, whom she regarded as intolerably self-centred and vain to the point of feeling nauseated in his presence.{{sfn|Rubio|2008|p=92}} While teaching in Lower Bedeque, she had a brief but passionate affair with Herman Leard, a member of the family with which she boarded.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gammel |first=Irene |chapter='I loved Herman Leard madly': L.M. Montgomery's Confession of Desire |title=The Intimate Life of L.M. Montgomery |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2-TN7QVOQuEC |editor-last=Gammel |editor-first=Irene |publisher=University of Toronto Press |date=2005 |isbn=0-8020-8924-0 |pages=129–153}}</ref> (Leard himself was engaged to neighbour Ettie Schurman while involved with Montgomery.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gammel |first=Irene |chapter='I loved Herman Leard madly': L.M. Montgomery's Confession of Desire |title=The Intimate Life of L.M. Montgomery |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2-TN7QVOQuEC |editor-last=Gammel |editor-first=Irene |publisher=University of Toronto Press |date=2005 |isbn=0-8020-8924-0 |pages=142–144}}</ref>) Of the men she loved, it was Leard she loved the most, writing in her diary: <blockquote>Hermann suddenly bent his head and his lips touched my face. I cannot tell what possessed me—I seemed swayed by a power utterly beyond my control—I turned my head—our lips met in one long passionate pressure—a kiss of fire and rapture such I had never experienced or imagined. Ed's kisses at the best left me cold as ice—''Hermann's'' sent flame through every fibre of my being.{{sfn|Brennan|1995|p=252}}</blockquote> On April 8, 1898, Montgomery wrote she had to stay faithful to Simpson: "for the sake of my self respect I ''must not'' stoop to any sort of an affair with another man". She then wrote: <blockquote>If I had—or rather if I ''could'' have—kept this resolve I would have saved myself incalculable suffering. For it was but a few days later that I found myself face to face with the burning consciousness that I ''loved'' Herman Leard with a wild, passionate, unreasoning love that dominated my entire being and possessed me like a flame—a love I could neither quell nor control—a love that in its intensity seemed little short of absolute madness. Madness! Yes!{{sfn|Rubio|2008|p=97}}</blockquote> In [[Victorian era|Victorian]] Canada, premarital sex was rare for women, and Montgomery had been brought up in a strict Presbyterian household where she had been taught that all who "fornicated" were among the "damned" who burned in Hell forever, a message she had taken to heart.{{sfn|Rubio|2008|p=97}} Despite this, she often invited Leard into her bedroom when everybody else was out, and though she refused to have sex with him as she wanted to be a virgin bride, she and Leard engaged in kissing and "preliminary lovemaking".{{sfn|Rubio|2008|p=97}} Montgomery called Leard in her diary only "a very nice, attractive young animal!", albeit one with "magnetic blue eyes".{{sfn|Rubio|2008|pp=96, 98}}

Following objections from her family and friends that Leard was not "good enough" for her, Montgomery broke off her relationship with him. He died shortly afterwards of the flu.{{sfn|Brennan|1995|p=252}} In 1898, after much unhappiness and disillusionment, Montgomery broke off her engagement to Simpson.{{sfn|Rubio|2008|p=98}} She ceased to seek romantic love.{{sfn|Bourgoin |1998 |p=136}} Montgomery was greatly upset when she learned of Leard's death in June 1899, writing in her diary: "It is easier to think him as dead, mine, ''all'' mine in death, as he could never be in life, mine when no other women could ever lie on his heart or kiss his lips."{{sfn|Rubio|2008|pp=99–100}}

In 1898, Montgomery moved back to Cavendish to live with her widowed grandmother. For a nine-month period between 1901 and 1902, she worked in [[Halifax, Nova Scotia|Halifax]] as a substitute proofreader for the newspapers ''Morning Chronicle'' and ''The Daily Echo''.<ref name= lmbio/>{{sfn|Rubio |Waterston |1995 |p=40}} Montgomery was inspired to write her first books during this time. Until her grandmother's death in March 1911, Montgomery stayed in Cavendish to take care of her. This coincided with a period of considerable income from her publications.{{sfn|Bourgoin |1998 |p=136}}