Lucy Maud Montgomery was a Canadian author best known for creating Anne Shirley, the spirited heroine of Anne of Green Gables. Born in Clifton, Prince Edward Island, Montgomery lost her mother when she was very young and was largely raised by her maternal grandparents in the nearby community of Cavendish. An imaginative and solitary child, she developed an early love of reading, poetry, and storytelling. After completing her education, she worked for several years as a schoolteacher while steadily writing poems, short stories, and articles for newspapers and magazines.

Montgomery achieved international fame with the publication of Anne of Green Gables in 1908. The novel, set amid the farms, woods, and seacoast of Prince Edward Island, follows the adventures of an imaginative orphan who transforms the lives of those around her. Its enormous success led Montgomery to write several sequels, including Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, and Anne's House of Dreams. She also created other beloved characters and series, including Emily Starr in Emily of New Moon, the Story Girl, and the families of The Blue Castle, Pat of Silver Bush, and A Tangled Web. Her fiction is especially admired for its vivid descriptions of nature, memorable characters, gentle humor, and understanding of childhood hopes and ambitions.

In 1911, Montgomery married Presbyterian minister Ewan Macdonald and moved to Ontario, where she continued writing while raising a family and fulfilling the demanding social responsibilities of a minister's wife. Although much of her adult life was spent away from Prince Edward Island, the landscapes and communities of her childhood remained central to her imagination and appeared repeatedly in her work. By the time of her death in 1942, Montgomery had written more than twenty novels as well as hundreds of short stories and poems. Her books have since been translated into many languages and adapted for stage, film, and television, while Anne of Green Gables has become one of the most enduring works of Canadian literature.