“I had a good laugh re-reading ‘Roughing It’ — came on his account of ‘Tom Quartz’ — the cat who was blown up in a mine. I have read that a score of times and every time I read it, I simply double up in spasms. Tonight I laughed until the tears came into my eyes. Old Tom did me more good than all the rotten medicine I’ve been taking this year.”
— L.M. Montgomery
What an amazing compliment. A book better than medicine. Beautifully enough: Mark Twain ended up reviewing LM Montgomery’s first book ‘Anne of Green Gables’ – and his championing of this weird book was one of the reasons it caught on – despite the book’s obvious merit. He wrote that Anne Shirley was ‘one of the immortal characters in literature’. Endorsement from Twain ain’t too shabby!
