Kate Scarth

So, yeah, so they're not exactly, I mean, I guess diaries are never, you know, it's a person's version of reality.

But yeah, they're kind of this great literary work themselves.

I mean, I do find that there's

can be a bit of titillation around, especially in terms of how her life ended, that when I was doing the Audible, The Great Course, The Life and Work of Montgomery, I wanted to make sure that that wasn't too central.

Obviously, and we have such better understanding of mental health too, but the interesting thing about her is what she created.

And of course, I mean, it's all the more powerful because she dealt with such hardship in her life.

But

I think it's really important not to lose track of the fact that she was this amazing artist.

It really is interesting.

And in the audible that you listened to that I did, I talk about, for example, her experience of hearing about the Halifax explosion, which was this really devastating collision between two ships in World War I. And

how even that, like she kind of, you know, she's able to turn an event like that into this very personal psychological experience of how she coped throughout that day.

But yeah, so they are literature, absolutely.

And like the, you know, the way that you were thinking about them in terms of her crafting place and character.

But yeah, there's also this, I guess, imaginative editing at work as well.

And they're also just really interesting because you can almost think of them as kind of experimental because she'll do these long diary entries where it's her kind of revisiting the Cavendish of her past.

So Cavendish is where she grew up and dreamt of Anne of Green Gables.

And it's kind of the real life counterpart we could say to Avonlea in the end books.

But she'll just kind of recreate with words like every turn in the road and the tree and who lived here.

And so she had this amazing imagination.

And that you could almost see it's like she's creating this map with words.