Emily of New Moon

L. M. Montgomery, Lucy Maud Montgomery

• Publisher: Read & Co. Children's
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781473316812
• eBook ISBN: 9781473373891

From the same author of the classic Anne of Green Gables, Emily Starr is a spirited and imaginative young girl whose life is filled with wonder and the challenges of growing up as she dreams of becoming a writer.

After the death of her father, young Emily is sent to live with her strict Aunt Elizabeth, gentle Aunt Laura, and eccentric cousin Jimmy at New Moon Farm on Prince Edward Island. Despite the initial hardships and the stark contrast to her previous life, Emily's fierce spirit and vivid imagination help her adapt to her new surroundings.

Emily finds solace in writing, pouring her heart into her journal and crafting stories that reflect her innermost thoughts and dreams. Along the way, she makes lifelong friends with Ilse Burnley, Teddy Kent, and Perry Miller, who each bring their own unique influence to her life.

As Emily navigates the complexities of family dynamics, friendship, and her aspirations of becoming a writer, she discovers her own resilience and the power of her creative spirit. Originally published in 1923, this beloved classic introduces readers to Emily's world in a heartwarming tale of perseverance, self-discovery, and the boundless possibilities of the imagination.

Check for Miss Brownell

Emily and Ilse were sitting out on the side bench of Blair Water school writing poetry on their slates—at least, Emily was writing poetry and Ilse was reading it as she wrote and occasionally suggesting a rhyme when Emily was momentarily stuck for one. It may as well be admitted here and now that they had no business whatever to be doing this. They should have been “doing sums,” as Miss Brownell supposed they were. But Emily never did sums when she took it into her black head to write poetry, and Ilse hated arithmetic on general principles. Miss Brownell was hearing the geography class at the other side of the room, the pleasant sunshine was showering in over them through the big window, and everything seemed propitious for a flight with the muses. Emily began to write a poem about the view from the school window.

It was quite a long time since she had been allowed to sit out on the side bench. This was a boon reserved for those pupils who had found favour in Miss Brownell’s cold eyes—and Emily had never been one of those. But this afternoon Ilse had asked for both herself and Emily, and Miss Brownell had let both go, not being able to think of any valid reason for permitting Ilse and refusing Emily—as she would have liked to do, for she had one of those petty natures which never forget or forgive any offence. Emily, on her first day of school, had, so Miss Brownell believed, been guilty of impertinence and defiance—and successful defiance at that. This rankled in Miss Brownell’s mind still and Emily felt its venom in a score of subtle ways. She never received any commendation—she was a target for Miss Brownell’s sarcasm continually—and the small favours that other girls received never came her way. So this opportunity to sit on the side bench was a pleasing novelty.

There were points about sitting on the side bench. You could see all over the school without turning your head—and Miss Brownell could not sneak up behind you and look over your shoulder to see what you were up to; but in Emily’s eyes the finest thing about it was that you could look right down into the “school bush,” and watch the old spruces where the Wind Woman played, the long, grey-green trails of moss hanging from the branches, like banners of Elfland, the little red squirrels running along the fence, and the wonderful white aisles of snow where splashes of sunlight fell like pools of golden wine; and there was one little opening in the trees through which you could see right over the Blair Water valley to the sand-hills and the gulf beyond. To-day the sand-hills were softly rounded and gleaming white under the snow, but beyond them the gulf was darkly, deeply blue with dazzling white masses of ice like baby icebergs, floating about in it. Just to look at it thrilled Emily with a delight that was unutterable but which she yet must try to utter. She began her poem. Fractions were utterly forgotten—what had numerators and denominators to do with those curving bosoms of white snow—that heavenly blue—those crossed dark fir tips against the pearly skies—those ethereal woodland aisles of pearl and gold? Emily was lost to her world—so lost that she did not know the geography class had scattered to their respective seats and that Miss Brownell, catching sight of Emily’s entranced gaze sky-wards as she searched for a rhyme, was stepping softly towards her. Ilse was drawing a picture on her slate and did not see her or she would have warned Emily. The latter suddenly felt her slate drawn out of her hand and heard Miss Brownell saying:

“I suppose you have finished those sums, Emily?”

Emily had not finished even one sum—she had only covered her slate with verses—verses that Miss Brownell must not see—must not see! Emily sprang to her feet and clutched wildly after her slate. But Miss Brownell, with a smile of malicious enjoyment on her thin lips, held it beyond her reach.

“What is this? It does not look—exactly—like fractions. ‘Lines on the View—v-e-w—from the Window of Blair Water School.’ Really, children, we seem to have a budding poet among us.”

The words were harmless enough, but—oh, the hateful sneer that ran through the tone—the contempt, the mockery that was in it! It seared Emily’s soul like a whip-lash. Nothing was more terrible to her than the thought of having her beloved “poems” read by stranger eyes—cold, unsympathetic, derisive, stranger eyes.

“Please—please, Miss Brownell,” she stammered miserably, “don’t read it—I’ll rub it off—I’ll do my sums right away. Only please don’t read it. It—it isn’t anything.”

Miss Brownell laughed cruelly.

“You are too modest, Emily. It is a whole slateful of—poetry—think of that, children—poetry. We have a pupil in this school who can write—poetry. And she does not want us to read this—poetry. I am afraid Emily is selfish. I am sure we should all enjoy this—poetry.”

Emily cringed every time Miss Brownell said “poetry” with that jeering emphasis and that hateful pause before it. Many of the children giggled, partly because they enjoyed seeing a “Murray of New Moon” grilled, partly because they realized that Miss Brownell expected them to giggle. Rhoda Stuart giggled louder than any one else; but Jennie Strang, who had tormented Emily on her first day at school, refused to giggle and scowled blackly at Miss Brownell instead.

Miss Brownell held up the slate and read Emily’s poem aloud, in a sing-song nasal voice, with absurd intonations and gestures that made it seem a very ridiculous thing. The lines Emily had thought the finest seemed the most ridiculous. The other pupils laughed more than ever and Emily felt that the bitterness of the moment could never go out of her heart. The little fancies that had been so beautiful when they came to her as she wrote were shattered and bruised now, like torn and mangled butterflies—”vistas in some fairy dream,” chanted Miss Brownell, shutting her eyes and wagging her head from side to side. The giggles became shouts of laughter.

“Oh,” thought Emily, clenching her hands, “I wish—I wish the bears that ate the naughty children in the Bible would come and eat you.”

There were no nice, retributive bears in the school bush, however, and Miss Brownell read the whole “poem” through. She was enjoying herself hugely. To ridicule a pupil always gave her pleasure and when that pupil was Emily of New Moon, in whose heart and soul she had always sensed something fundamentally different from her own, the pleasure was exquisite.

When she reached the end she handed the slate back to the crimson-cheeked Emily.

“Take your—poetry, Emily,” she said.

Emily snatched the slate. No slate “rag” was handy but Emily gave the palm of her hand a fierce lick and one side of the slate was wiped off. Another lick—and the rest of the poem went. It had been disgraced—degraded—it must be blotted out of existence. To the end of her life Emily never forgot the pain and humiliation of that experience.

Miss Brownell laughed again.

“What a pity to obliterate such—poetry, Emily,” she said. “Suppose you do those sums now. They are not—poetry, but I am in this school to teach arithmetic and I am not here to teach the art of writing—poetry. Go to your own seat. Yes, Rhoda?”

For Rhoda Stuart was holding up her hand and snapping her fingers.

“Please, Miss Brownell,” she said, with distinct triumph in her tones, “Emily Starr has a whole bunch of poetry in her desk. She was reading it to Ilse Burnley this morning while you thought they were learning history.”

Perry Miller turned around and a delightful missile, compounded of chewed paper and known as a “spit pill,” flew across the room and struck Rhoda squarely in the face. But Miss Brownell was already at Emily’s desk, having reached it one jump before Emily herself.

“Don’t touch them—you have no right!” gasped Emily frantically.

But Miss Brownell had the “bunch of poetry” in her hands. She turned and walked up to the platform. Emily followed. Those poems were very dear to her. She had composed them during the various stormy recesses when it had been impossible to play out of doors and written them down on disreputable scraps of paper borrowed from her mates. She had meant to take them home that very evening and copy them on letter-bills. And now this horrible woman was going to read them to the whole jeering, giggling school.

But Miss Brownell realized that the time was too short for that. She had to content herself with reading over the titles, with some appropriate comments.

Meanwhile Perry Miller was relieving his feelings by bombarding Rhoda Stuart with spit pills, so craftily timed that Rhoda had no idea from what quarter of the room they were coming and so could not “tell” on any one. They greatly interfered with her enjoyment of Emily’s scrape, however. As for Teddy Kent, who did not wage war with spit pills but preferred subtler methods of revenge, he was busy drawing something on a sheet of paper. Rhoda found the sheet on her desk the next morning; on it was depicted a small, scrawny monkey, hanging by its tail from a branch; and the face of the monkey was as the face of Rhoda Stuart. Whereat Rhoda Stuart waxed wrath, but for the sake of her own vanity tore the sketch to tatters and kept silence regarding it. She did not know that Teddy had made a similar sketch, with Miss Brownell figuring as a vampirish-looking bat, and thrust it into Emily’s hand as they left school.

“’The Lost Dimond—a Romantic Tale,’” read Miss Brownell. “’Lines on a Birch Tree’—looks to me more like lines on a very dirty piece of paper, Emily—’Lines Written on a Sundial in our Garde...

Table of contents

• EMILY OF NEW MOON
• Lucy Maud Montgomery
• The House in the Hollow
• A Watch in the Night
• A Hop Out of Kin
• A Family Conclave
• Diamond Cut Diamond
• New Moon
• The Book of Yesterday
• Trial by Fire
• A Special Providence
• Growing Pains
• The Tansy Patch
• A Daughter of Eve
• Fancy Fed
• Various Tragedies
• Check for Miss Brownell
• Father Cassidy
• Friends Again
• By Aerial Post
• “Romantic But Not Comfortable”
• Wyther Grange
• Deals with Ghosts
• A Different Kind of Happiness
• “She Couldn’t Have Done It”
• On the Bay Shore
• The Vow of Emily
• A Weaver of Dreams
• Sacrilege
• When the Curtain Lifted
• Emily’s Great Moment