The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career

Elisabeth Anne MacDonald-Murray is an assistant professor of English at
the University of Western Ontario.

L.M. Montgomery was in mid-career in 1917 when she was asked by the
editor of Everywoman’s World, a Toronto magazine, to write an
autobiographical essay on the theme “The Story of My Career.” The
result was The Alpine Path, which was published in six instalments from
June to November 1917. The text did not appear in print again until
1975, when it was finally published in book form with the original
six-part serial format replaced by 10 chapters. This reissue, complete
with the original brief and anonymous preface, provides valuable
insights into the sources of many of Montgomery’s stories.
Unfortunately, the publishers have failed to include scholarly analysis
or editorial annotation. The Alpine Path, a relatively unknown work, is
presented in a literary vacuum, with no reference to its place and
significance within the broader context of Montgomery’s life and work.

The Alpine Path bears a strong resemblance to Montgomery’s fiction;
she recounts her own life much as she had earlier narrated the lives of
Anne and the Story Girl. Like her stories and novels, her autobiography
is animated by her love for her P.E.I. home and her pride in her island
roots, and reflects the same moral character that seeks to encourage and
elevate her readers. Montgomery notes that she took her title from a
poem that had inspired her as a child, and modestly states that,
although she does not think of her “long, uphill struggle, through
many quiet, uneventful years” as something so grand as a “career,”
she has undertaken to tell her “tame story” in the hope that it
might “serve to encourage some other toiler who is struggling along in
the weary pathway I once followed to success.”

In writing The Alpine Path, Montgomery strengthened her own sense of
her vocation and presented, in part, a defence against the condescension
of academics and literary reviewers. Although scholars have become more
appreciative, they will have to wait for the scholarly edition her
autobiography deserves.