Emily Of New Moon

Published in 1923 by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Emily of New Moon is the first of three novels featuring Emily Byrd Starr. The coming-of-age series begins when Emily, age 12, goes to live with her aunts at New Moon farm after her father’s death. There, she meets new friends and discovers her talent for writing. Emily Climbs (1925) and Emily’s Quest (1927) are the novels that follow. The series has never gone out of print since its first publication and has enjoyed worldwide appeal. In 2019, BBC named it one of its 100 Most Influential Novels. The books are similar to Montgomery’s best-known series, Anne of Green Gables (1908), although the author stated she identified more with Emily than Anne, both of whom were orphaned girls sent to live with strangers on Prince Edward Island in Canada.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) developed the novel into a TV series in 1998, and it was also adapted into an anime series called Kaze no Shojo Emily (Emily, The Wind Girl) in 2007.

This study guide utilizes the 1983 Bantam paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide include references to animal cruelty, gender discrimination, and violence, specifically as depictions of harsh disciplinary measures for children.

Plot Summary

Emily Byrd Starr lives happily with her father, Douglas Starr, and their housekeeper, Ellen Greene. She doesn’t have friends her age but has many imaginary friends in nature, and she talks to her reflection in the mirror. She likes reading and wandering outside alone and is interested in language and writing.

One day, after a walk, Ellen tells her that her father only has a week or two left to live. Stunned, Emily confirms the news with her father, who is angry that Ellen told her and in such a blunt way. He says her mother’s family, the Murrays, who have been absent from their lives because they disapproved of the marriage, will care for her after his death.

Douglas dies several weeks later. After a night of crying, Emily is quiet and stoic. Her mother’s family attends the funeral, and Ellen introduces Emily to them. Ellen says Emily should hope that wealthy and childless Aunt Ruth takes her in, but Emily dislikes Ruth’s judgmental demeanor. She wants to live with Aunt Laura, whom she’s been told is most like her mother. However, Aunt Laura lives with Aunt Elizabeth, who makes all the decisions. Emily snubs several relatives when she meets them, including Aunt Ruth, creating the impression she is proud and bad-mannered. Jimmy, a cousin, defends her, and Emily likes him immediately. When the time comes to decide who will take her, Emily eavesdrops under a table but is discovered when she yells out to defend her father. Since no one particularly wants her, Emily’s relatives have her draw names to decide. She draws Elizabeth’s name, meaning she will live at New Moon Farm, where Laura and Jimmy also live.

At New Moon, Emily enjoys exploring the many interesting and beautiful things inside the house and around the farm. Jimmy and Laura are kind and nurturing, while Elizabeth has strict rules.

Emily starts school, hating it at first. She dislikes how her teacher, Miss Brownell, ridicules students who make mistakes, and all the girls in the class are very rude to her. Eventually, Emily becomes friends with Rhoda, and the other girls soon accept her. However, Emily’s friendship with Rhoda ends when Muriel Porter comes for a visit. Rhoda wants to impress Muriel, who dislikes Emily, so Rhoda doesn’t invite Emily to her birthday party. This snub breaks Emily’s heart, and she realizes that Rhoda, while seemingly sweet, is not a genuine person.

Emily grows closer to her neighbor, Ilse Burnley, a tomboy who lives with her father, Dr. Burnley, and only goes to school when she feels like it. Emily is fascinated and sometimes shocked by Ilse’s less structured lifestyle, her and her father’s atheism, and their bad tempers.

In her first months at New Moon, Emily cannot write because she threw her notebook in the fire rather than let Elizabeth read it, and paper is scarce. One day, she sees Laura preparing to burn a stack of old bank letters, and Emily begs to have them so she can write on the backs. Now, Emily can again write stories, poems, descriptions, and, most importantly, letters to her father, with the latter comprising several chapters.

Emily and Ilse befriend Teddy Kent, who has been sick a long time, and Dr. Burnley tells the girls he needs children to play with to help him get stronger. Teddy is a talented artist and lives with his overbearing and jealous mother. The three children grow close.

During apple season, Emily eats an apple of her neighbor Lofty John, who tells her he had poisoned the apple to kill the rats in his workshop. Believing she is dying, Elizabeth tells her aunts, but she discovers Lofty John was teasing. Emily decides not to speak to him again, and Ilse also stops visiting him.

Emily makes a new friend, Perry Miller, when Mr. Lee’s bull almost charges at her. Perry tells her to run. Perry lives with his aunt in a poor part of town. He instantly likes Emily and comes to work at New Moon as a farmhand. Perry also starts attending school with Emily and joins her friend group.

Lofty John upsets everyone when he decides to chop down the grove of trees where the children love to play. Since Lofty John is Catholic, Teddy says he’d have to listen if a priest told him not to cut down the trees. Emily walks to White Cross and talks to Father Cassidy, Lofty John’s priest. Charmed by Emily, Father Cassidy talks to Lofty John, who agrees not to cut the trees if Emily forgets the poisoned apple prank and visits him again. She agrees.

Emily’s Great Aunt Nancy asks that Emily visit her one summer at her home, Wyther Grange, and her aunts agree to send her, even though Emily has never met Nancy. Nancy lives with a relative named Caroline, whom many people say is a witch. Both women are in their eighties and enjoy gossiping and discussing the past. Emily enjoys her visit because she can do whatever she wants, but she is horrified to learn from them the secret of Ilse’s mother that everyone else had hidden from her: She left Ilse’s father and ran away with a cousin before their boat sank. Emily refuses to believe it but now knows why everyone avoided talking about Ilse’s mother and why Dr. Burnley neglects Ilse so terribly.

At Wyther Grange, Emily meets Nancy’s nephew, Dean Priest, whom everyone calls “Jarback” because of an oddly sloped shoulder. He saves her from slipping down a cliff, and they become close friends. Emily enjoys Dean’s intelligence and sense of humor and loves that he knew her father at school; Dean is more than 20 years older than Emily and hints that he may wait a decade or so before trying to marry her. After several weeks, Aunt Nancy announces that she is tired of Emily and it is time for her to go home. Dean promises to write her letters and visit.

At New Moon, Emily’s aunts surprise her by letting her have the bedroom her mother occupied as a child. She is thrilled with this new arrangement and now writes in her room instead of the garret.

One day, Elizabeth finds and reads Emily’s letters to her father. She is hurt by some of what Emily wrote and speaks to Emily about it. Elizabeth is surprised that, instead of feeling remorse, Emily is angry that her privacy was violated. Elizabeth learns that there aren’t different rules for children and adults and that she should have treated Emily the same as Laura or Jimmy. She apologizes, and Emily tells her she didn’t mean what she wrote about her; she was just venting her anger in that moment. Emily realizes that Elizabeth has feelings that can be hurt, and their relationship changes after the incident. Emily stops writing letters to her father.

A new teacher, Mr. Carpenter, comes to Blair Water after Miss Brownell gets married and leaves. He is an older man, and Emily and her friends grow to like him very much because he recognizes each of their special talents and encourages them.

When Emily contracts a bad case of measles, she has a fever dream that illuminates the truth about Ilse’s mother. Emily keeps saying that “she couldn’t have done it” and “check the well,” and when Jimmy investigates, he finds the remains of Beatrice Burnley in the Lees’ well, proving that she had not run away with her cousin. This revelation changes Dr. Burnley, restoring his faith in God and his love for Ilse. Emily is relieved to have helped solve this mystery and bring her best friend’s family back together.

After she recovers, Emily brings some of her best poems to Mr. Carpenter to read, and though he says most of it is not good, there are about 10 great lines, and he can see potential in her. He says she must continue to work very hard, and she accepts the challenge; she envisions herself climbing an “the Alpine path” (290) on the way to becoming a famous writer.