Lucy Maud Montgomery was born on Prince Edward Island, in Canada. Her mother died when she was a baby, and she was raised by her strict grandparents in the farming village of Cavendish, where she read everything she could find and began writing stories as a child.

She became a teacher, then came home to look after her grandmother, and wrote Anne of Green Gables in the evenings. Five publishers turned it down; when it came out in 1908 it was a best-seller at once. She wrote seven more books about Anne and many other novels, married a minister, and lived most of her later life in Ontario.