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An Author Speaks (1939 essay)

Dalhousie Gazette (Halifax), 24 February 1939, 2.

Editorial Note: When I was putting together volume 1 of my three-volume critical anthology, The L.M. Montgomery Reader—which included essays by Montgomery, interviews with her, and commentary on her work that had appeared between 1908 (the year that Anne of Green Gables was published) and 1944 (two years after her death)—I ended up having to make some difficult decisions about what to include and what to leave out. Montgomery claimed, in a 1929 piece entitled “An Autobiographical Sketch,” to have become “so tired of writing the same old facts over and over,” but although she published numerous iterations of what I ultimately termed “her ‘how I began’ narrative” (Introduction, 8), a comparative reading of these showed that even when she appeared to be telling the same story twice (or more than twice), each version had a unique scope and set of details.

This year, in honour of the anniversary of L.M. Montgomery’s birth 149 years ago and almost ten years to the day since I received my first copy of volume 1 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader, I am pleased to share with you an “outtake” from that book, an essay entitled “An Author Speaks” that to the best of my knowledge has not been reprinted since its appearance in the Dalhousie Gazette in February 1939. It appeared in an issue of this student newspaper that was published by a collective that consisted entirely of women, led by editors Mary Hayman and Barbara Murray, and that was referred to as “the annual Co-ed edition of the Gazette,” according to an editorial commenting on gains and continued roadblocks in terms of gender equity on the Dalhousie campus (“We Have Equality”).

Montgomery’s contribution to this issue, which draws somewhat on her earlier essay “The Way to Make a Book,” published in Everywoman’s World in 1915, opens with an unsigned editor’s note:

We are pleased to present in this issue an editorial which discusses the problems of writing by a person who is excellently qualified to do so—Miss L.M. Montgomery (Mrs. Macdonald). She is one of Dalhousie’s best known women alumnae. Every Canadian girl has read and enjoyed Anne of Green Gables. It is a delightful habit that will continue, a childhood classic that we thank Miss Montgomery for as sincerely as we thank her for sending to us this delightful editorial.

Montgomery’s advice about authenticity, hard work, skill development, and the importance of purpose shows just why her approach to writing, much like her writing itself, continues to be relevant today. (B.L.)


Probably the two questions oftenest asked a writer who has won some measure of success are: “Would you advise me to take up writing as a career?” and “How do you go about writing a book?” The first question is reasonable and sensible. The second is utterly unreasonable and nonsensical. Yet it is the more frequent of the two.

I always answer the first by telling of an old lady I once knew who used to say to girls, “Don’t marry as long as you can help it because when the right man comes along you can’t help it.” So to aspiring young people, “Don’t write if you can help it. Authorship is a hard, exacting profession. But if you are a born writer you won’t be able to help it and advice will have not the least effect on you.”

Before attempting to write a book be sure you have something to say. It need not be a very great or lofty or profound something. It is not given to many of us to utter

“Jewels five words long
That on the stretched forefinger of all time
Sparkle forever.”

But if we have something to say that will bring a whiff of fragrance to a tired soul or a weary heart, or a glint of sunshine to a clouded life, then that something is worth saying and it is our duty to try to say it as well as in us lies.

One should not try to write a book impulsively or accidentally as it were. The idea may come by impulse or accident but it must be worked out with care and skill, or its embodiment will never partake of the essence of true art. Write . . . and put what you have written away: read it over weeks later: cut, prune and re-write. Repeat this process until your work seems to you as good as you can make it. Never mind what outside critics say. They will all differ from each other in their opinions so there is really not a great deal to be learned from them. Be your own severest critic. Never let a paragraph in your work get by you until you are convinced that it is as good as you can make it. Somebody else may be able to improve it vastly. Somebody will be sure to think he can. Never mind. Do your best . . . and do it sincerely. Don’t try to write like some other author. Don’t try to “hit the public taste.” The public taste doesn’t really like being hit. It prefers to be allured into some fresh pasture, surprised with some unexpected tid-bit.

An accusation is commonly made against us novelists that we paint our characters . . . especially our ridiculous or unpleasant characters “from life.” The public seems determined not to allow the smallest particle of creative talent to an author. If you write a book you must have drawn your characters “from life.” You, yourself, are of course the hero or heroine: your unfortunate neighbors supply the other portraits. People will cheerfully tell you that they know this or that character of your books intimately. This will infuriate you at first but you will learn to laugh at it. It is in reality a subtle compliment . . . though it is not meant to be. It is a tribute to the “life-likeness” of your book people.

Write only of the life you know. This is the only safe rule for most of us. A great genius may, by dint of adding study and research to his genius, be able to write of other ages and other environments than his own. But the chances are that you are not a Scott or a Kipling. So stick to what you know. It is not a narrow field. Human life is thick around us everywhere. Tragedy is being enacted in the next yard; comedy is playing across the street. Plot and incident and colouring are ready to our hands. The country lad at his plough can be made just as interesting as a knight in shining armour: the bent old woman we pass on the road may have been as beautiful in her youth as the daughters of Vere de Vere and the cause of as many heart-aches. The darkest tragedy I ever heard of was enacted by people who lived on a backwoods farm: and funnier than anything I ever read was a dialogue between two old fishermen who were gravely discussing a subject of which they knew absolutely nothing. Unless you are living alone on a desert island you can find plenty of material all around you: and even there you could find it in your own heart and soul. For it is surprising how much we all are like other people. Jerome K. Jerome says, “Life tastes just the same whether you drink it out of a stone mug or a golden goblet.” There you are! So don’t make the mistake of trying to furnish your stories with golden goblets when stone mugs are what your characters are accustomed to use. The public isn’t much concerned with your external nothings . . . your mugs or your goblets. What they want is the fresh, spicy brew that Nature pours for us everywhere.

Write, I beseech you, of things cheerful, of things lovely, of things of good report. Don’t write about pig-styes because they are “real.” Rose gardens and pine woods and mountain peaks towering to the stars are just as real and just as plentiful. Write tragedy if you will, for there must be shadow as well as sunlight in any broad presentment of human life: but don’t write of vileness, of filth, of unsavory deeds and thoughts. There is no justification for such writing. The big majority of the reading public doesn’t want it: it serves not one good end.

Don’t spin your book out too long . . . Gone With The Wind to the contrary notwithstanding. Don’t make anybody too bad or too good. Most people are mixed. Don’t make vice attractive and goodness stupid. It’s nearly always the other way in real life. Cultivate a sense of dramatic and humourous values: feel what you write: love your characters and live with them: and KEEP ON TRYING.

Notes

one of Dalhousie’s best known women alumnae: Montgomery completed two semesters of courses in English literature during the 1895–1896 academic year at Dalhousie University, but due to insufficient funding she was unable to complete her degree.

when the right man comes along: Montgomery offered similar advice in an interview with Phoebe Dwight, published in the Boston Traveler in 1910.

“Jewels five words long . . . Sparkle forever”: From The Princess: A Medley (1847), a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

“life-likeness”: I have corrected the original, which reads “like-likeness.”

a Scott or a Kipling: Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), Scottish novelist and poet whose novels included Waverley (1814) and Anne of Geierstein (1829); Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), English poet and novelist whose books included The Jungle Book (1894) and Just So Stories (1902). A similar sentence in “The Way to Make a Book” refers to Scott and to James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851), American author best known for Last of the Mohicans (1826).

the daughters of Vere de Vere: An allusion to the poem “Lady Clara Vere de Vere,” part of The Lady of Shalott, and Other Poems (1842), by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

“Life tastes just the same . . . a golden goblet”: Properly, “Life tastes much the same, whether we quaff it from a golden goblet or drink it out of a stone mug.” From The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886), by Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927), English writer and humorist.

Gone with the Wind: Novel by Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949), American author, whose first edition ran over one thousand pages; Montgomery read it in 1936, the year it was published (Montgomery, 29 November 1936, in SJLMM, 5: 114). The film adaptation starring Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh would be released in December 1939, less than a year after the publication of this essay. Incidentally, the actor who had been known as Anne Shirley after playing the lead role in the 1934 film adaptation of Anne of Green Gables had been in serious consideration for the supporting role of Melanie Hamilton, which ultimately was played in the film by Olivia de Havilland (Lefebvre, “What’s in a Name?,” 205).

Bibliography

Dalhousie Gazette (Halifax). “We Have Equality.” 24 February 1939, 2.

Dwight, Phoebe. “Want to Know How to Write Books? Well Here’s a Real Recipe.” In Lefebvre, The L.M. Montgomery Reader, 1: 53–56.

Gone with the Wind. Directed by Victor Fleming. Screen play by Sidney Howard. Selznick International Pictures, 1939. Internet Movie Database, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031381/.

Lefebvre, Benjamin. “Introduction: A Life in Print.” In Lefebvre, The L.M. Montgomery Reader, 1: 8.

—, ed. The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 1: A Life in Print. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013.

—. “What’s in a Name? Toward a Theory of the Anne Brand.” In Anne’s World: A New Century of Anne of Green Gables, edited by Irene Gammel and Benjamin Lefebvre, 192–210. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.

Mitchell, Margaret. Gone with the Wind. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1936. Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/gonewithwind0000marg_p5d7/.

Montgomery, L.M. “An Autobiographical Sketch.” In Lefebvre, The L.M. Montgomery Reader, 1: 254–59.

—. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 5: 1935–1942. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2004.

—. “The Way to Make a Book.” In Lefebvre, The L.M. Montgomery Reader, 1: 137–43.

Spotlight on International Scholarship (10)

This is the tenth of a series of posts offering a spotlight on some recent contributions to international scholarship on L.M. Montgomery’s life, work, and legacy, in languages other than English.

O brincar como experiência criativa na psicanálise com crianças

English Title: Play as a Creative Experience in Psychoanalysis with Children

Authors: Taísa Resende Sousa, Regina Lúcia Sucupira Pedroza, and Maria Regina Maciel

Language: Portuguese

Publication Details: Fractal: Revista de Psicologia 32, no. 3 (September–December 2020): 269–76. https://doi.org/10.22409/1984-0292/v32i3/5754.

Abstract: This study focuses on the play as a creative experience in psychoanalysis with children, from Freudian contributions and deepening in Winnicott’s concepts, especially in relation to playing: an assumption that goes beyond the typical way children usually express themselves, regarding the continuity of the self. The objective is to reflect upon this theme, considering playing as a transitional phenomenon and creative experience peculiar to the expansion of the self. Two clinical vignettes are introduced, to illustrate the theoretical constructions of psychoanalysis with children, of playing, of the scribble game and of the melody as a transitional phenomenon. In conclusion, we used a Canadian television series, Anne with an “E,” as a reference and inspiration to reflect upon the life of a teenager who was adopted by a family that managed to provide the young girl a suitable environment. Just as in the analytical sessions, we understand that there must be a willingness to play, as well as a fruitful meeting between people so that they can achieve their creative potential.

Spotlight on International Scholarship (9)

This is the ninth of a series of posts offering a spotlight on some recent contributions to international scholarship on L.M. Montgomery’s life, work, and legacy, in languages other than English.

Prawo do inności i protodziewczyńskość – Jo March i Anne Shirley w perspektywie girlhood studies

English Title: The Right to Otherness and Proto-Girlhood: Jo March and Anne Shirley from the Perspective of Girlhood Studies

Author: Michalina Wesołowska

Language: Polish

Publication Details: Czas Kultury 38, no. 2 (2022): 148–57. https://czaskultury.pl/sklep/prawo-do-innosci-i-protodziewczynskosc-jo-march-i-anne-shirley-w-perspektywie-girlhood-studies/.

Abstract: The author analyzes the creation of two heroines of canonical texts of so-called novels for girls—Jo March from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868) and Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery (1908). She reads them as proto-girlhood predecessors of Pippi from Astrid Lindgren’s novels. She examines the way in which the heroines are socialized and how they negotiate their independence and otherness. For context, she uses the film and series adaptations Little Women (2019, directed by Greta Gerwig) and Anne with an E (2017–2019, created by Moira Walley-Beckett).

Spotlight on International Scholarship (8)

This is the eighth of a series of posts offering a spotlight on some recent contributions to international scholarship on L.M. Montgomery’s life, work, and legacy, in languages other than English.

Lucy Maud Montgomery’nin “YeĢil’in Kızı” Adlı Kitabının Yazın Çevirisi Ve Makine Çevirisi Çerçevesinde KarĢılaĢtırmalı Ġncelenmesi

English Title: A Comparative Analysis of “Anne of Green Gables” by Lucy Maud Montgomery within the Framework of Literary Translation and Machine Translation

Author: Rabia Aksoy Arıkan

Language: Turkish

Publication Details: LOTUS: International Journal of Language and Translation Studies 1, no. 1 (2021): 22 pp. https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/lotus/issue/72313/1166936.

Abstract: This study includes a discussion on the literary translation and machine translation of Anne of Green Gables, a novel by the Canadian writer Lucy Maud Montgomery, one of the popular culture publications, the novel is a summary of the events that are narrated in what is originally a collection of eight books. In this article, differences between human and machine translation have been studied, with special emphasis on the importance of human factor in translation. This study has been conducted by using online machine translation applications such as Google and Yandex translation tools. The article aims to highlight the importance of features peculiar to the writer and the work at the stage of post-editing done by a human translator. Besides, this study tries to find out the best way to make translations of literary works in recent technological research on machine translation. An assessment has been made on the translation of the novel by conventional methods and by applications of computer-aided machine translations. One of the goals of this study is to show that, as with many types of publications, popular culture publications can be rendered through machine translation. In the evaluation, the method of “rule-based machine translation” has been preferred. This method, which allows the researcher to work more actively, has been found to be more scientific than other types of machine translation. Moreover, it has been found that machine translation systems such as Google Translate and Yandex Translate have a number of shortcomings in transferring concepts related to the sense being communicated, and that they operate by a system based on structures at lexical level. Today, with the machine translation becoming more widely available, it has been seen that postediting done by human editors contributes significantly to enhancing the quality of literary translations, including works of popular culture. In this process, special emphasis has been placed on issues such as post-editors’ conception of the task being done, their way of looking at the world, and their knowledge about literary translation. The examples given in this study revealed that, particularly in literary translation, every post-editing procedure does not always yield effective results, and that everything depends on the translator’s background knowledge and his/her competence in literary translation. Discussions have been made on this topic, with special emphasis on the translator’s ability to interpret a literary text.

Spotlight on International Scholarship (7)

This is the seventh of a series of posts offering a spotlight on some recent contributions to international scholarship on L.M. Montgomery’s life, work, and legacy, in languages other than English.

„Festiwal kanadyjskiej pisarki”, czyli o mniej znanych polskich tłumaczeniach Anne of Green Gables Lucy Maud Montgomery

English Title: “A Festival of the Canadian Writer” or on the Lesser Known Polish Translations of Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Author: Dorota Pielorz

Language: Polish

Publication Details: Porównania 26, no. 1 (2020): 235–53. https://doi.org/10.14746/por.2020.1.13.

Abstract: The article deals with Polish translations of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s book Anne of Green Gables. The author focuses especially on the renderings published at the turn of the 21st century, when the so called “festival of the Canadian writer” began. This phrase is used in reference to the renascence of the popularity of Montgomery’s work in Poland. This cultural and marketing phenomenon not only affected readers, but also influenced the publishers’ and translators’ choices. In the article, some dimensions of this casus are discussed. Then some excerpts of translations are compared in order to show the features of the image of Canada inscribed in them by translators. What is more, the author points out that the Polish renderings can provide interesting information about the different aspects of Polish reality at the turn of the 21st century, in particular about the publishing policies and the Polish culture, aesthetic norms and trends or stereotypes.

Spotlight on International Scholarship (6)

This is the sixth of a series of posts offering a spotlight on some recent contributions to international scholarship on L.M. Montgomery’s life, work, and legacy, in languages other than English.

Imaginando un pasado feminista: subversión femenina y asuntos de género en la serie Anne with an E

English Title: Imagining a feminist past: female subversion and gender issues in the show Anne with an E

Author: Camila Andrea Picardo Barrientos

Language: Spanish

Publication Details: Comunicación y Género 4, no. 2 (2021): 125–36. https://doi.org/10.5209/cgen.72030.

Abstract: This article analyzes the period drama and TV series Anne with an E from a gender perspective discussing its female representation and empowerment narrative. The methodology consisted on a textual analysis through characters and a sample of episodes which are contrasted with theoretical gender criteria. It was found that the show rescues the period’s female problematics highlighting the otherness discourse in opposition to the hegemonic patriarchal system. The female representation is subversive, innovative and the protagonist’s agency contains a type of feminist heroism which is uncommon to find in TV fiction. The show’s gender subversion discourse refutes the late 19th century gender rules and at the same time achieves to show relevance with present day gender issues.

Spotlight on International Scholarship (5)

This is the fifth of a series of posts offering a spotlight on some recent contributions to international scholarship on L.M. Montgomery’s life, work, and legacy, in languages other than English.

Normer och restriktioner i det litterära polysystemets periferi: Om utelämningar i översättningar av klassiska flickböcker

English Title: Norms and Constraints in the Periphery of the Literary Polysystem: On Omissions in Translations of Girls’ Classics

Author: Laura Leden

Language: Swedish

Publication Details: Marginalia, edited by Ritva Hartama-Heinonen and Pirjo Kukkonen, 100–17. Helsinki: University of Helskini, 2020. Translatologica Helsingiensia 4. https://hdl.handle.net/10138/312804.

Abstract: Girls’ books are a genre about girls and girlhood reflecting girls’ contemporary conditions and possibilities. This genre has had a peripheral status in the literary polysystem due to the patriarchal structures of the society. This paper will analyze norms and constraints at work in the Swedish translation of L.M. Montgomery’s classic Emily trilogy to test Even Zohar’s (1990) polysystem hypothesis about translation, according to which translations with a peripheral status are likely to be acceptancy-oriented rather than adequacy-oriented. The analysis of the Swedish translations from 1955–1957 targeting a younger readership than Montgomery’s originals shows that due to didactic and pedagogical norms the translations are subject to major adaptation and abridgement in the form of purification, cultural neutralisation and plot-driven abridgement. The translations are used for educational purposes and the constraints imposed reflect a more restrictive image of girlhood conveyed to young girl readers.

Spotlight on International Scholarship (4)

This is the fourth of a series of posts offering a spotlight on some recent contributions to international scholarship on L.M. Montgomery’s life, work, and legacy, in languages other than English.

Tłumacz architekt a tłumacz konserwator zabytków: Kanoniczny i polemiczny przekład Anne of Green Gables Lucy Maud Montgomery jako ogniwa serii translatorskiej

English Title: The Translator as an Architect or as a Conservator: Polemical and Canonical Translations as Links in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables Series of Translations into Polish

Author: Dorota Pielorz

Language: Polish

Publication Details: Wielogłos 45 (2020): 79–103. https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.20.023.12831.

Abstract: Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables has always been very popular in Poland. Since its first publication in 1908, there have been more than a dozen Polish renderings of this novel, which can therefore be regarded as a translation series. This paper compares two opposite links in the series: Rozalia Bernstein’s canonical and Paweł Beręsewicz’s polemical translations. This paper also includes an analysis of those passages which reflect some characteristics of the juxtaposed renderings, especially the different roles that the translators can play in the reception of a foreign language text as well as the translation strategies they use.

Spotlight on International Scholarship (3)

This is the third of a series of posts offering a spotlight on some recent contributions to international scholarship on L.M. Montgomery’s life, work, and legacy, in languages other than English.

Limited animation, unlimited seriality. Die Konfigurationen des Seriellen in den Anime-Serien Haha o Tazunete Sanzann Marco, Akage No Anne und Tanoshî Mûmin Ikka

English Title: Limited Animation, Unlimited Seriality: The Configurations of the Serial in the Anime series Haha o Tazunete Sanzann MarcoAkage No Anne and Tanoshî Mûmin Ikka

Author: Herbert Schwaab

Language: German

Publication Details: In Fernsehwissenschaft und Serienforschung: Theorie, Geschichte und Gegenwart (post-)televisueller Serialität [Television Studies and Series Research: Theory, History and Present of (Post-)Televisual Seriality], edited by Denis Newiak, Dominik Maeder, and Herbert Schwaab, 315–38. Wiesbaden: Springer, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-32227-4_13.

Abstract: This article deals with the Japanese animated series Marco, Anne with the Red Hair and The Moomins, which were produced in the 1970s and 1990s and which offer idiosyncratic adaptations of children’s book classics in 50 to 52 episodes of 25 minutes. The slowness and precision of these adaptations is discussed as a specific form of seriality, as “unlimited seriality,” which fits into the television program in an awkward way. It is viewed as a product of an aesthetic of anime and limited animation described by Thomas Lamarre and other authors, which creates a different form of movement and a complex interplay of movement and stillness, which also affects an unsegmented televisual narrative form of constant advancement.

Note: Translation provided by Google Translate.

Spotlight on International Scholarship (2)

This is the second of a series of posts offering a spotlight on some recent contributions to international scholarship on L.M. Montgomery’s life, work, and legacy, in languages other than English.

『빨강머리 앤』에 재현된 아동기의 상상력

English Title: Childhood Imagination in Anne of Green Gables

Author: Yunjeong Yang

Language: Korean

Publication Details: The Korean Society for Teaching English Literature 26, no. 2 (2022): 233–54. https://doi.org/10.19068/jtel.2022.26.2.09.

Abstract: This paper intends to study the pastoral world of childhood in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908). The work has a vivid childhood imagination that expresses the writer’s own experiences, such as a deficiency in childhood and wish-fulfillment, a satire of religious practice, and awareness of a national important issue regarding the preservation of rural Canada in a literary way. Anne, an 11-year-old orphan girl and main character, was a hopeless, skinny child who was initially exposed to all kinds of excesses. However, she slowly grows up in a loving home provided by Matthew and Marilla, taming passion and imagination, and learns to live up to Avonlea’s social and behavioral expectations. Anne not only brings Matthew and Marilla a much more fulfilling and happy life than ever before, but she also influences the Avonlea community. Anne never loses her childhood imagination, even though she grows up to be a great member of Avonlea. Anne’s childhood imagination lets her move forward, keeping her and the community’s desperate needs alive in search of a utopia.

Spotlight on International Scholarship (1)

This is the first of a series of posts offering a spotlight on some recent contributions to international scholarship on L.M. Montgomery’s life, work, and legacy, in languages other than English.

Anne på svenska: Hur tidsanda och produktionsvillkor påverkat huvudpersonens karaktärsdrag i svenska översättningar och adaptioner av Anne of Green Gables

English Title: Anne in Swedish: How the Spirit of the Age and Production Terms Influence the Protagonist’s Character Traits in Swedish Translations and Adaptations of Anne of Green Gables

Author: Anna Vogel

Language: Swedish

Details: Barnboken: Journal of Children’s Literature Research 44 (2021). https://doi.org/10.14811/clr.v44.577.

Abstract: L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908) has received much academic interest. Drawing on related research on the novel and its Swedish editions, my article investigates how the variation in the Swedish versions influences the characterization of Anne 1909–2018. My study acknowledges the feminist view within translation studies as expressed by Sherry Simon, and uses Norman Fairclough’s linguistic model for contextualization. The primary material consists of Montgomery’s original text, the translations and adaptations by Karin Jensen, Aslög Davidson, Margareta Sjögren-Olsson, and Christina Westman as well as correspondence between the publishing houses and translators. Further, I have interviewed Westman and corresponded with her publisher. The texts are analysed regarding omissions and additions. On a micro-level, all active verbs where Anne is the grammatical subject are analysed. My results show that all editions give prominence to Anne’s academic ambition. A major finding is that the 1941 and 1962 versions increase Anne’s ambition by using more active verbs and stronger expressions. Westman’s 2018 edition, however, is a subtle revision of the first Swedish translation, with the result that Anne’s ambition is diminished again. Despite girls and women having gained more freedom over the last 100 years, the latest edition thereby interrupts the tendency to stress Anne’s ambition. This is understood as a result of clashing discursive and social norms. On the other hand, the emphasis on Anne’s ambition in the 1941 and 1962 editions comes with a cost of religious, moral, intellectual, and emotional aspects, creating a one-dimensional Anne.

Spotlight on International Scholarship (Preamble)

Every once in a while, I consult a variety of online sources (including search engines available to researchers through university libraries) to ensure that this website’s lists of materials pertaining to L.M. Montgomery—particularly book-length studies, book-length extensions, journal articles, book chapters, paratexts, dissertations/theses, and reviews—are as complete and up to date as possible. Not only are new contributions to the field of L.M. Montgomery studies being published all the time, but also, as search engines expand their reach and as more and more older print materials are digitized and thereby made text searchable, I frequently have the pleasure of discovering older items that I missed.

Recently, I stumbled upon several contributions that so far had escaped me, by virtue of the fact that they were not in English. But because most of them had been published in journals that offer English translations of titles and abstracts, I was still able to understand each item’s approach and argument.

Because I run this website on my own time, it isn’t possible for me to expand the scope of this website beyond materials available in English or in French. Instead, as a way to count down to the anniversary of Montgomery’s birth on November 30, I am going to publish a series of blog posts that offer a spotlight on a selection of international contributions to Montgomery scholarship published in the last five years or so, as a way to help fellow English-speaking readers and researchers get a better sense of international scholarship about Montgomery’s life, work, and legacy.

Be sure to subscribe to this blog to receive future blog posts via email, and please feel free to contact me if there are any materials that I have missed—including your own!

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How Fair the Realm Literary Allusions Open to the View

Extract from the first edition of ANNE OF AVONLEA, by L.M. Montgomery.
"Splendid," Anne agreed, gray shining eyes looking down into blue shining ones Anne and Paul both knew
"How fair the realm
Imagination opens to the view,"
and both knew the way to that happy land. There the rose of joy bloomed immortal by dale and stream; clouds never darkened the sunny sky; sweet bells never jangled out of tune; and kindred spirits abounded. The knowledge of that land’s geography … “east o’ the sun, west o’ the moon” … is priceless lore, not to be bought in any market place.
Detail from page 167 of the original edition (first impression) of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Avonlea,
published by L.C. Page and Company in 1909. Courtesy of the Internet Archive.

Earlier this year, I received a message from a fellow L.M. Montgomery reader asking about an apparent quotation that appears in chapter 15 of Anne of Avonlea: “How fair the realm / Imagination opens to the view.” Some digging revealed that this was one of the quotations that Rea Wilmshurst, in her pioneering 1989 article entitled “L.M. Montgomery’s Use of Quotations and Allusions in the ‘Anne’ Books,” had not been able to identify. And although the quotation also appears, in identical form but without the line break, in an entry in Montgomery’s comic diary written collaboratively with Nora Lefurgey (included in The Intimate Life of L.M. Montgomery, edited by Irene Gammel) and in a 1927 letter from Montgomery to Ephraim Weber (included in After Green Gables, edited by Hildi Froese Tiessen and Paul Gerard Tiessen), the editors of those volumes were unable to identify this source either (see Montgomery to Weber, 16 November 1927, in After Green Gables, 148; Montgomery, 26 January 1903, in Montgomery and Lefurgey, “‘ . . . Where Has My Yellow Garter Gone?,” 27).

What I found intriguing is that Montgomery used this quotation, in identical form except for the line break, on three separate occasions, years apart from each other (1903, 1909, and 1927), and yet, the fact that this quotation still hasn’t been identified indicates that either Montgomery quoted the text inaccurately (as she often did, since when dropping quotations into her work she evidently relied on memory, which is rarely exact) or the source in question is incredibly obscure. At the same time, judging by the large number of results from a Google search for the text of this quotation, it’s clear that its text has resonated with Montgomery readers, many of whom, faced with no evidence to the contrary, credit Montgomery herself as the source of the quotation.

Still, as I’ve remarked several times before, the increased digitization of old print materials over the last fifteen years or longer has given researchers opportunities to fill many of the gaps in the work of earlier scholars like Wilmshurst, who had to rely on dictionaries of quotations and sayings and to comb through hard copies of the complete works of innumerable poets and prose writers in order to complete her research, and so it is a testament to Wilmshurst’s determination and skill that she identified as many quotations and allusions as she did. Digitization allows researchers not only access to books, magazines, and newspapers beyond the physical holdings at individual libraries but also the ability to search through electronic texts.

Detail from the title page of the original edition of ANNE OF AVONLEA, published by L.C. Page and Company, in 1909, with text as follows:
"Flowers spring to blossom where she walks / The careful ways of duty, / Our hard, stiff lines of life with her / Are flowing curves of beauty." —Whittier.
Detail from the title page of the original edition (first impression) of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Avonlea,
published by L.C. Page and Company in 1909. Courtesy of the Internet Archive.

And so, in most cases, a few rounds on Google will solve lingering mysteries or confirm earlier findings quite easily: it takes less than a minute to determine that “east o’ the sun, west o’ the moon,” quoted in that same paragraph in Anne of Avonlea, refers to the title of a Norse fairy tale that appears in translated form under the title “East of the Sun & West of the Moon” in Andrew Lang’s The Blue Fairy Book (1889). It is equally straightforward to determine that the epigraph to Anne of Avonlea—“Flowers spring to blossom where she walks / The careful ways of duty, / Our hard, stiff lines of life with her / Are flowing curves of beauty,” attributed on the title page simply to “Whittier”—is from John Greenleaf Whittier’s long poem “Among the Hills” and to read the extract in the context of the whole poem. And as I pointed out last year when discussing the epigraph to Rilla of Ingleside, the digitization of old print materials can sometimes allow us to determine not only what text but also what version of a text Montgomery is quoting.

After trying multiple combinations of terms from the “imagination opens to the view” quotation, I finally came across a single instance of something that initially looked like a dead end: a poem entitled “Day-Dreams,” attributed to Harriet Trowbridge, which begins with what looks like an epigraph: “How fair the realm / Imagination opes [sic] to view— / Soft emerald fields / And skies of melting blue!” The poem appears in the February 1886 issue of Wide Awake, a Boston periodical, but doesn’t offer a source for the epigraph. I couldn’t find any other hits for this version of the quotation, which disappointed me; while at least I could answer my fellow Montgomery reader’s question and confirm that yes, this is a real quotation, I didn’t seem to be any closer to determining where it was from.

Page from a digitized nineteenth-century magazine, beginning with the following textual items:
DAY-DREAMS
Harriet Trowbridge
“How fair the realm
  Imagination opes to view—
Soft emerald fields
  And skies of melting blue!”
What follows is the first half of a poem, consisting of two-couplet stanzas (beginning with "O tell me, pretty, Alice, tell me, I pray, / Where have you been wand’ring this midsummer day?") and including a drawing of a little girl with frizzy hair accompanied by a caption that reads "Pretty Alice."
Detail from “Day-Dreams,” a poem by Harriet Trowbridge that was published in the
February 1886 issue of Wide Awake, a Boston periodical. Courtesy of Google Books.

Still, figuring this discovery was better than nothing, I sent all of this to my longtime friend Jennifer H. Litster, whose Ph.D. on Montgomery at the University of Edinburgh involved a tremendous amount of work on Montgomery’s literary allusions (and was completed prior to the widespread digitization of older print materials). And I’m glad I did, because her response made me reconsider my initial assumption that I’d hit another dead end.

“She read Wide Awake, didn’t she? So there is of course the possibility that this is the source for her.”

Jenny reminded me that Montgomery had read Wide Awake as a child at some point during the years Wellington and David Nelson had lived with her and her grandparents in Cavendish, something I had forgotten. And so, armed with our respective copies of Montgomery’s journals are both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, we pieced together a possible chronology as best we could using the clues Montgomery had left behind in both her journals and in her celebrity memoir “The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career.” The first thing to do was to determine if it was possible that Montgomery had read the February 1886 issue of Wide Awake, given that, as Montgomery mentioned in a journal entry dated 7 January 1910, it was Wellington Nelson who had been sent this monthly magazine (CJLMM, 2: 258). Elsewhere in her journal, she mentioned that the Nelson boys had stayed with her until she was eleven (3 May 1908, in CJLMM, 2: 185) and that they left sometime in the winter (7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 266). Given that Montgomery turned eleven at the end of November 1885, it is plausible that she read that February 1886 issue of Wide Awake before the Nelson boys left. And it’s also plausible that she incorporated the contents of this magazine into her own creative life, given that she mentioned earlier in that 1910 journal entry that as a child she had named her cat Topsy “after a cat in ‘Wide Awake’” (CJLMM, 2: 264).

And if it seems unlikely that Montgomery clipped or copied items she had read in magazines as a child and used them in her own writing as an adult, we do have evidence of her doing just this. In a journal entry dated October 1916 in which she mentioned that she had written “the story of ‘My Literary Career’” for the Toronto magazine Everywoman’s World, she reported that she had selected “The Alpine Path” as a her title, an echo of “a bit of fugitive verse entitled ‘Lines to the Fringed Gentian’ by some forgotten author. The last verse haunted my memory and has been with me all these years as an aspiration” (LMMCJ, 1: 251). When she mentioned this memoir again in an entry dated January 1917, she specified that the poem, entitled “The Fringed Gentian,” had been “published in the old Godey’s Lady’s Book” and referred to it as “the little verse which I wrote in my port-folio” (LMMCJ, 1: 268). In the late 1980s, Carol Gaboury established that this poem had appeared as part of a sixteen-chapter serial entitled “Tam: The Story of a Woman,” by Ella Rodman Church and Augusta de Bubna, published in six instalments between January and June 1884, when Montgomery was nine (see Lefebvre, Headnote, 232).

What Montgomery did not mention in either journal entry is that she also clipped the poem from the pages of Godey’s Lady’s Book and pasted it in what is now known as her Red Scrapbook, on a page that was reproduced in Elizabeth Rollins Epperly’s book Imagining Anne: The Island Scrapbooks of L.M. Montgomery.

Scan of a yellowed scrapbook clipping from an old periodical, cropped around the full text of a poem called "The Fringed Gentian"; the full text of this poem is in the blog post.
Scan of a clipping from an old periodical, cropped around the full text of a poem called "The Fringed Gentian"; the full text of this poem is in the blog post.
Two clippings of the poem “The Fringed Gentian,” appearing in a fiction serial entitled “Tam:
The Story of a Woman,” by Ella Rodman Church and Augusta de Bubna, published in the March 1884
issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book (Philadelphia). On the left is a detail from the page in Godey’s Lady’s Book
(courtesy of the Internet Archive); on the right is a detail from a page in Montgomery’s Red Scrapbook,
appearing in Elizabeth Rollins Epperly’s Imagining Anne: L.M. Montgomery’s Island Scrapbooks.

I’m not aware that anyone has found a clipping of Harriet Trowbridge’s “Day-Dreams” in Montgomery’s scrapbook, but since the issue of Wide Awake in question didn’t belong to her, perhaps she had to content herself with transcribing it in a notebook (one that, like her “port-folio,” no longer survives).

In a sense, this is one of the reasons I chose to make Montgomery the central focus of my academic research more than twenty years ago: that there’s always some new to investigate and discover, especially as the digitization of older print materials reveals new clues that can be added to the mix. And given that Montgomery was born 148 years ago today, it is worth taking stock of all of the ways that her life, her work, and her legacy continue to fascinate readers all around the world.

Still, when it comes to the literary allusions in Montgomery’s work, for every mystery that’s solved are a dozen more than remain elusive. The opening line of Anne of Avonlea refers to Anne as “a tall, slim girl, ‘half-past sixteen’” (AA, 1), but my attempts to find a source for that quotation have so far led me nowhere, except for Mrs. A.D. Hawkins’s 1879 novel Hannah: The Odd Fellow’s Orphan (where the phrase “half past sixteen” also appears within quotation marks) and various references to 4:30 in the afternoon. But maybe one day, the right print publication will be digitized and made text searchable, and someone will have better luck solving that mystery, too.

Bibliography

Church, Ellen Rodman, and Augusta de Bubna. “Tam: The Story of a Woman” (third instalment). Godey’s Lady’s Book (Philadelphia), March 1884, 233–46. https://archive.org/details/sim_godeys-magazine_1884-03_108_645/page/232/.

Epperly, Elizabeth Rollins. Imagining Anne: The Island Scrapbooks of L.M. Montgomery. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2008. 100 Years of Anne.

Hawkins, Mrs. A.D. Hannah: The Odd Fellow’s Orphan. Indianapolis: Douglass & Carlon, 1879. https://archive.org/details/hannahoddfellow00hawkgoog/page/n86/

Lefebvre, Benjamin. Headnote to “The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career,” by L.M. Montgomery. In Montgomery, A Name for Herself, 231–35.

Montgomery, L.M. After Green Gables: L.M. Montgomery’s Letters to Ephraim Weber, 1916–1941. Edited by Hildi Froese Tiessen and Paul Gerard Tiessen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

—. Anne of Avonlea. Boston: L.C. Page and Company, 1909. https://archive.org/details/anneavonlea00montgoog/.

—. The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery: The PEI Years, 1901–1911. Edited by Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth Hillman Waterston. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2013.

—. L.M. Montgomery’s Complete Journals: The Ontario Years, 1911–1917. Edited by Jen Rubio. N.p.: Rock’s Mills Press, 2016.

—. A Name for Herself: Selected Writings, 1891–1917. Edited by Benjamin Lefebvre. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. The L.M. Montgomery Library.

Montgomery, L.M., and Nora Lefurgey. “‘ . . . Where Has My Yellow Garter Gone?’ The Diary of L.M. Montgomery and Nora Lefurgey.” Edited, annotated, and illustrated by Irene Gammel. In The Intimate Life of L.M. Montgomery, edited by Irene Gammel, 19–87. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.

Trowbridge, Harriet. “Day-Dreams.” Wide Awake (Boston), February 1886, 164–65. https://books.google.ca/books?id=ekg_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA164.

Wilmshurst, Rea. “L.M. Montgomery’s Use of Quotations and Allusions in the ‘Anne’ Books.” Canadian Children’s Literature / Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse 56 (1989): 15–45.

Next on Readathon: Anne of Green Gables!

Cover of Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery, a book with a green cloth cover that features the title and the author's name in gold letters below a framed painting showing the profile and shoulders of a red-headed Caucasian woman, facing left.

Today on the L.M. Montgomery Readathon, a Facebook group that Andrea McKenzie and I have curated since the beginning of the pandemic, we start our discussion of our seventh book, Anne of Green Gables—and you’re invited to join us!

Between now and early November, we’ll be reading this favourite book together chapter by chapter. In addition to members taking turns reading each chapter in turn, we’ll post discussion questions, favourite book covers, details about Montgomery’s life and times (including education, fashion, and technology), allusions to previous works of literature, and information about the book’s publishing history. While we may bring up adaptations and supplementary texts (including more than two dozen abridged editions for young children) on occasion, the bulk of the focus will be on L.M. Montgomery’s novel. But all readers are welcomed to join us, whether you are reading the book for the first time or for the hundredth time.

The full schedule is below. I look forward to discussing this book with you!

L.M. Montgomery Readathon

Reading Schedule for Anne of Green Gables

Monday, 4 July 2022: Chapter I. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Surprised

Thursday, 7 July 2022: Chapter II. Matthew Cuthbert Is Surprised

Monday, 11 July 2022: Chapter III. Marilla Cuthbert Is Surprised

Thursday, 14 July 2022: Chapter IV. Morning at Green Gables

Monday, 18 July 2022: Chapter V. Anne’s History

Thursday, 21 July 2022: Chapter VI. Marilla Makes Up Her Mind

Monday, 25 July 2022: Chapter VII. Anne Says Her Prayers

Thursday, 28 July 2022: Chapter VIII. Anne’s Bringing-Up Is Begun

Monday, 1 August 2022: Chapter IX. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Properly Horrified

Thursday, 4 August 2022: Chapter X. Anne’s Apology

Monday, 8 August 2022: Chapter XI. Anne’s Impressions of Sunday-School

Thursday, 11 August 2022: Chapter XII. A Solemn Vow and Promise

Monday, 15 August 2022: Chapter XIII. The Delights of Anticipation

Thursday, 18 August 2022: Chapter XIV. Anne’s Confession

Monday, 22 August 2022: Chapter XV. A Tempest in the School Teapot

Thursday, 25 August 2022: Chapter XVI. Diana Is Invited to Tea with Tragic Results

Monday, 29 August 2022: Chapter XVII. A New Interest in Life

Thursday, 1 September 2022: Chapter XVIII. Anne to the Rescue

Monday, 5 September 2022: Chapter XIX. A Concert, a Catastrophe, and a Confession

Thursday, 8 September 2022: Chapter XX. A Good Imagination Gone Wrong

Monday, 12 September 2022: Chapter XXI. A New Departure in Flavourings

Thursday, 15 September 2022: Chapter XXII. Anne Is Invited Out to Tea

Monday, 19 September 2022: Chapter XXIII. Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honour

Thursday, 22 September 2022: Chapter XXIV. Miss Stacy and Her Pupils Get Up a Concert

Monday, 26 September 2022: Chapter XXV. Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves

Thursday, 29 September 2022: Chapter XXVI. The Story Club Is Formed

Monday, 3 October 2022: Chapter XXVII. Vanity and Vexation of Spirit

Thursday, 6 October 2022: Chapter XXVIII. An Unfortunate Lily Maid

Monday, 10 October 2022: Chapter XXIX. An Epoch in Anne’s Life

Thursday, 13 October 2022: Chapter XXX. The Queen’s Class Is Organized

Monday, 17 October 2022: Chapter XXXI. Where the Brook and River Meet

Thursday, 20 October 2022: Chapter XXXII. The Pass List Is Out

Monday, 24 October 2022: Chapter XXXIII. The Hotel Concert

Thursday, 27 October 2022: Chapter XXXIV. A Queen’s Girl

Monday, 31 October 2022: Chapter XXXV. The Winter at Queen’s

Thursday, 3 November 2022: Chapter XXXVI. The Glory and the Dream

Monday, 7 November 2022: Chapter XXXVII. The Reaper Whose Name Is Death

Thursday, 10 November 2022: Chapter XXXVIII. The Bend in the Road

And Then There Were Three

Cover of A Name for Herself: Selected Writings, 1891–1917
Cover of A World of Songs: Selected Poems, 1894–1921
Cover art for /Twice upon a Time: Selected Stories, 1898–1939/, by L.M. Montgomery, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre. The top two-thirds of the cover depict framed images of Anne Shirley, a Caucasian woman with red hair, against a vintage blue wallpaper; the bottom third of the image includes the title, the author's name, and the editor's name against a beige background.
Covers for A Name for Herself: Selected Writings, 1891–1917, A World of Songs: Selected Poems, 1894–1921, and Twice upon a Time: Selected Stories, 1898–1939, the first three volumes in The L.M. Montgomery Library, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre. Courtesy of University of Toronto Press.

I’m happy to report that Twice upon a Time, the third volume in The L.M. Montgomery Library and consisting of two dozen short stories (many of which are collected in book form for the first time) from across Montgomery’s career as a short story writer, is now out in the world. As a way to promote this book, I’d like to do a Q&A on this website. So if you have any questions for me about this book, this book series, Montgomery’s periodical career, or any other aspect of Montgomery’s life, work, and legacy, I’d like to hear from you! Please contact me with your questions and I’ll answer as many of them as I can.

To commemorate the publication of this latest book, University of Toronto Press has made all seven of my L.M. Montgomery books—including the three-volume critical anthology The L.M. Montgomery Readeravailable at a 40% discount. I have no idea how long these books will be available at that price, but this is a great opportunity to get caught up on any titles you’ve missed.

Twice upon a Time: Pre-release Sightings

Screenshot detail of the following text, alongside a cover image that shows two framed images of red-headed women hanging side by side on a wall with vintage blue wallpaper. The text reads as follows:
Hello Benjamin Lefebvre,
Based on your recent activity, we thought you might be interested in this.
Twice upon a Time: Selected Stories, 1898-1939
L.M. Montgomery, Benjamin Lefebvre
Price: $29.95
Learn More

A few days ago, I received an automated email from a certain large book retailer suggesting that I might be interested in Twice upon a Time, the upcoming third volume in The L.M. Montgomery Library. While this isn’t the first time this particular bookstore chain has sent me an email recommending my own book, I appreciated receiving this email because it reminded me that there have been a couple of updates regarding this book that I’ve been meaning to share with you.

Although the book won’t be released for a few more weeks (likely the end of June for the paperback and early July for the hardcover), there are now a couple of ways that you can preview the book prior to its release. The first is that the ebook version available to institutional libraries is now available, and although users need to access it through a university library’s catalogue, elements at the front of the book—including the book’s preface—are freely available to read. The second is that the book is available on Netgalley for people who are interested in writing an advance review (I’ve seen three so far on Goodreads, which I very much appreciate!). The third is that a selection of interior pages can now be browsed on a number of platforms, including Google Books.

You can purchase this book directly from the publisher, University of Toronto Press, at substantial discounts, in paperback, hardcover, and ebook formats, or from your favourite bookseller.

Shop Local (paperback)
Shop Local (hardcover)
Amazon.ca (Canada) (paperback/hardcover/Kindle)
Amazon.com.au (Australia) (paperback/hardcover/Kindle)
Amazon.com.br (Brazil) (paperback/hardcover/Kindle)
Amazon.co.jp (Japan) (paperback/hardcover/Kindle)
Amazon.co.uk (UK) (paperback/hardcover/Kindle)
Amazon.se (Sweden) (paperback/hardcover)
Angus and Robertson (Australia) (paperback)
Angus and Robertson (Australia) (hardcover)
Barnes and Noble (paperback/hardcover/Nook Book)
Blackwells (UK) (paperback)
Blackwells (UK) (hardcover)
Chapters Indigo (paperback)
Chapters Indigo (hardcover)
Chapters Indigo (kobo)
Google Play (ebook)
Indie Bound (paperback)
Indie Bound (hardcover)
McNally Robinson (paperback)
McNally Robinson (hardcover)
Waterstones (paperback)
Waterstones (hardcover)
Wheelers (New Zealand)

And if you like the books in this series, please consider recommending them to your public or institutional library and contributing a ranking or a review on your favourite book-related website. Your support is much appreciated!

Anne’s Birthday Month

“I was just on my way over to invite you to help me celebrate my birthday on Saturday,” said Anne.

“Your birthday? But your birthday was in March!”

“That wasn’t my fault,” laughed Anne. “If my parents had consulted me it would never have happened then. I should have chosen to be born in spring, of course. It must be delightful to come into the world with the mayflowers and violets. You would always feel that you were their foster sister. But since I didn’t, the next best thing is to celebrate my birthday in the spring.”

Anne of Avonlea, chapter 13: “A Golden Picnic”

Although Anne Shirley never specifies when in March her birthday is held, the fact that today, March 8, is International Women’s Day seems to be a good occasion to begin the celebration of Anne’s birthday month. Accordingly, between now and the end of March I’ll share a selection of Anne book covers from multiple countries and across time through L.M. Montgomery Online’s social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. If you don’t follow this website on one of these platforms, please do so! At the end of the month, I’ll post all the covers again on this website and invite people to vote on their favourites.

We’ll start with the book cover that accompanied Anne’s first appearance in the book industry—that of the first edition of Anne of Green Gables, published by L.C. Page and Company in 1908.

Cover of Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery, a book with a green cloth cover that features the title and the author's name in gold letters below a framed painting showing the profile and shoulders of a red-headed Caucasian woman, facing left.

Unidentified Clipping in L.M. Montgomery’s Scrapbook: “L.M. Montgomery Is Undecided”

Image of a newspaper clipping of an article entitled “L.M. Montgomery Is Undecided” and consisting of the following text: L.M. Montgomery, whose charming story of love in an elysian Canadian summer, “Blue Castle,” has just been published by Stokes, writes that she is busy now on the third Emily book and a “dreadful time I am having, too, with all her beaux. Her love affairs won’t run straight. Then, too, I’m bombarded with letters from girls who implore me to let her marry Dean, not Teddy. But she is set on Teddy herself so what am I to do? One letter recently was quite unique. All previous letters have implored to write ‘more about Emily, no matter whom she marries,’ but the writer of this begged me not to write another Emily book because she felt sure if I did she would marry Teddy and she (the writer) just couldn’t bear it. . . . So between these contradictory pleas, I’m in a regular mess!”
Unidentified clipping (1926) in L.M. Montgomery’s ”Scrapbook of Reviews,” part of the L.M. Montgomery Collection, Archival and Special Collections, University of Guelph Library

This week on the L.M. Montgomery Readathon (which Andrea McKenzie and I run on Facebook), we are concluding our group discussion of Emily Climbs. As such, I thought this would be a good time to share (both on the Readathon and on this blog) a newspaper clipping I came across several years ago in one of L.M. Montgomery’s scrapbooks, in which she’s quoted talking about the difficulties she’d later face when trying to write the next volume about Emily, which would be published as Emily’s Quest in 1927. The clipping, entitled “L.M. Montgomery Is Undecided,” is unidentified and there’s no indication of to whom she has written these words (let alone if she intended them for publication), but it reads as follows:

L.M. Montgomery, whose charming story of love in an elysian Canadian summer, “Blue Castle,” has just been published by Stokes, writes that she is busy now on the third Emily book and a “dreadful time I am having, too, with all her beaux. Her love affairs won’t run straight. Then, too, I’m bombarded with letters from girls who implore me to let her marry Dean, not Teddy. But she is set on Teddy herself so what am I to do? One letter recently was quite unique. All previous letters have implored me to write ‘more about Emily, no matter whom she marries,’ but the writer of this begged me not to write another Emily book because she felt sure if I did she would marry Teddy and she (the writer) just couldn’t bear it. . . . So between these contradictory pleas, I’m in a regular mess!”

We won’t be reading Emily’s Quest next on the Readathon, but I wanted to bring this up as a way to raise three topics of conversation.

First, the clipping consists of a rare instance of Montgomery revealing that sometimes she feels as though the character truth of her characters and the input she receives from readers sometimes make her lose control of her own material. What does this reveal about Montgomery as a writer, especially as a writer of fiction released in instalments?

Second, it indicates that her readers felt differently (and yet adamantly) about Emily’s choice of husband, although of course there’s no way to indicate how evenly they were divided between Team Teddy and Team Dean. But there’s no indication here of any of the creepy subtext about Dean that many Readathon participants commented on as we read through this book. If our growing awareness of this subtext now is in part a byproduct of the #MeToo movement and of an increased societal awareness of toxic masculinity, what does this suggest about the way people read (or reread) and interpret (or reinterpret) a work of fiction?

Third, the only plot element mentioned in this clipping is Emily’s “beaux,” as though Emily’s sole quest in this novel-in-progress is to find a husband. What do you make of the fact that, at least as far as this article reports, Montgomery’s readers seem to be more interested in reading more about Emily’s love life than about her writing life? (Note that it refers to The Blue Castle as a “charming story of love in an elysian Canadian summer,” which really simplifies this complex novel.) Or is the emphasis here on Emily’s love life simply because her writing career is comparatively much more straightforward to write about?

If you’d like to join the L.M. Montgomery Readathon, we are always looking for new members! Andrea and I will soon announce the next book we’ll be reading together, starting in mid-January 2022.

UPDATE: Thanks to Simon Lloyd, university archivist and special collections librarian at the University of Prince Edward Island Library, this “unidentified” clipping is unidentified no more! He responded to my tweet about this blog post with a scan of a newspaper page that matches the clipping, and it shows that it appeared in the Salt Lake Telegram of Salt Lake City, Utah, on 10 October 1926, p. 4. Quite possibly this story was picked up by a number of other newspapers across the continent, but this particular clipping is most definitely from this newspaper. Thanks so much, Simon!

Next on Conversations: “L.M. Montgomery’s Kindred Spirits: The One in Scotland”

Graphic consisting of a montage of four images (a vintage typewriter and an old book; an envelope addressed to Geo B. McMillan / 34 Castle St. / Alloa, Scotland"; a photograph of Montgomery posing outside in fancy dress and hat; and a street sign that reads "Ch Montgomery Rd"), with the following text: "Conversations about L.M. Montgomery Presents / L.M. Montgomery's Kindred Spirits: The One in Scotland" / "Mary Beth Cavert" / "4 December 2021."

Our next Conversations about L.M. Montgomery event will be held over Zoom on Saturday, December 4, at 2:00 p.m. (EST). It will feature Mary Beth Cavert, whose extensive contributions to L.M. Montgomery studies include co-editing The Shining Scroll (the newsletter of the L.M. Montgomery Literary Society of Minnesota) and researching the family members and friends to whom Montgomery dedicated her books.

Beth’s presentation is entitled “L.M. Montgomery’s Kindred Spirits: The One in Scotland,” and in it she will share parts of her most recent project, which involves preparing a complete edition of Montgomery’s forty-year correspondence with G.B. MacMillan of Alloa, Scotland.

Registration is required; all interested persons are welcome to join us for this presentation, and a video of the presentation will be posted on YouTube at a later date. If you have any questions about the event, please contact me. Hope to see you there!

A Note on the Epigraph to Rilla of Ingleside

Cover of the original edition of L.M. Montgomery's Rilla of Ingleside, published in 1921. In the centre is a painted image of a young Caucasian woman wearing a white dress and a red jacket clutching a letter and sitting on the ground, with trees behind her and poppies scattered at her feet. The image is surrounded by a design elements that indicate the author's name and the book title against a navy-blue background.

Today came the official announcement of the signing of the armistice! The Great War is over—the world’s agony has ended. What has been born? The next generation may be able to answer that. We can never know fully.

—L.M. Montgomery, journal entry dated 11 November 1918

Given that not only is today Remembrance Day but also this year marks the one-hundredth anniversary of L.M. Montgomery’s Great War novel Rilla of Ingleside, I thought this might be a good opportunity to share with you some findings about an aspect of Montgomery’s work that I’ve long found fascinating, since it has to do with her attempts to engage with the work of fellow Canadian writers.

As her journals and letters show, Montgomery’s reading interests overall were quite broad, but she had a particular fondness for the work of canonical nineteenth-century poets (mostly male) who were located in England, Scotland, and the United States. And so, since her books are filled with allusions to and quotations from a vast array of literary works, it’s not surprising that the same names recur several times.

If we look specifically at her books’ epigraphs—short quotations that appear near the beginning of a book as a way to offer readers a hint about its contents (particularly for readers who recognize the quotation and can place it in the context of the overall work)—we can see a clear pattern in terms of what texts and what authors Montgomery chose to highlight. Of the ten books by Montgomery that begin with an epigraph from someone else’s work, all but one quote the work of a male poet from outside Canada: Robert Browning (Anne of Green Gables), John Greenleaf Whittier (Anne of Avonlea and Chronicles of Avonlea), James Hogg (Kilmeny of the Orchard), George Gordon, Lord Byron (The Story Girl), Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Anne of the Island), Rupert Brooke (Anne’s House of Dreams), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Rainbow Valley), and Rudyard Kipling (Pat of Silver Bush).

Title page of the original edition of Rilla of Ingleside, with the following text elements: RILLA OF INGLESIDE / by / L.M. Montgomery // Author of “Anne of Green Gables,” “Anne of the Island,” “Anne’s House of Dreams,” “Rainbow Valley,” “The Story Girl,” “The Watchman,” etc. // "Now they remain to us forever young / Who with such splendour gave their youth away.” / —Sheard / With frontispiece in colour by / M.L. Kirk // Toronto / McClelland and Stewart, Limited / Publishers

The epigraph to Rilla of Ingleside is thus unique in two particular ways: first, its author, Virna Sheard, is the only Canadian as well as the only woman whose work appears in one of Montgomery’s epigraphs; and second, Sheard is so relatively unknown that when Rea Wilmshurst published her list of literary allusions in the Anne books in Canadian Children’s Literature / Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse in 1989, she was unable to identify the poem by Sheard in question. In the years then, as more and more print materials have been digitized and made text searchable, it’s been far easier to determine that these lines are from Sheard’s poem “The Young Knights,” which appeared in her 1917 collection Carry On! and which was reprinted in John W. Garvin’s anthology Canadian Poems of the Great War (1918). Montgomery’s poem “Our Women” also appears in that anthology, so it would seem plausible that she had come across Sheard’s poem in that anthology and used it when she started writing Rilla of Ingleside in mid-March 1919.

The problem, though, is that the lines from Sheard’s poem as they appear on the title page of Rilla of Ingleside don’t quite match the way they appear in Carry On! or in Canadian Poems of the Great War. Here is a detail from the title page of Rilla of Ingleside.

Detail from the title page of the first edition of /Rilla of Ingleside/, with text as follows: "'Now they remain to us forever young / Who with such splendour gave their / youth away.” / —Sheard

Note the preference here for the Canadian spelling of “splendour” and the line break just before “youth away.” In the versions appearing in Sheard’s and Garvin’s books, these elements appear slightly differently:

Detail from /Carry On!/, by Virna Sheard, with text as follows: “’The Young Knights’ // Now they remain to us forever young / Who with such splendor gave their you away; / Perpetual Spring is their inheritance, / Though they have lived in Flanders and in France / A round of years, in one remembered day.
Detail from /Canadian Poems of the Great War/, edited by John W. Garvin, with text as follows: “’The Young Knights’ // Now they remain to us forever young / Who with such splendor gave their you away; / Perpetual Spring is their inheritance, / Though they have lived in Flanders and in France / A round of years, in one remembered day.

In Carry On!, the first of the two images, the text opts for the American spelling of “splendor,” and in both versions there’s no line break before “youth away” as there is on the title page of Rilla of Ingleside. There seemed to be a mystery here and I knew it would continue to bug me until I figured it out.

And so, when Andrea McKenzie and I started discussing Rilla of Ingleside at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic on the L.M. Montgomery Readathon, I decided to take another look at the surviving files. I found a digital copy of Carry On! on the website of the Canadiana digital project, so I combed through the rest of the book and noticed that Sheard mentions in the acknowledgements section that “The Young Knights” was one of several poems in the collection that was first published in the Toronto Globe (now the Globe and Mail). Lo and behold, a quick search through the digital archives of the Globe showed that the poem appeared in that newspaper on 23 May 1916:

Detail from “The Young Knights” by Virna Sheard, published in the Toronto Globe on 23 May 1916, with text as follows: “’The Young Knights’ // Now they remain to us forever young / Who with such splendor gave their / youth away; / Perpetual Spring is their inheritance, / Though they have lived in Flanders / and in France / A round of years, in one remembered / day.

Because this poem appeared in a newspaper with narrow columns, longer lines of poetry needed to broken in two and indented, as happens three times in this stanza. So even though this Globe version uses the U.S. spelling of “splendor,” it seems more likely that Montgomery drew on this newspaper version when writing her book. Not to mention that, on the title of her handwritten manuscript, she writes “splendor” instead of “splendour,” so presumably the change to Canadian spelling was made at the typescript stage or at the typesetting stage.

Detail from the title page of the handwritten manuscript of /Rilla of Ingleside/, with text as follows: ”’Now they remain to us forever young / Who with such splendor gave their / youth away.’ —Sheard.”

These are obviously minor differences between texts, and devoting an entire blog post to them may seem somewhat excessive. To close, then, here is the full text of Virna Sheard’s poem “The Young Knights,” as it appeared in her book Carry On!, published in 1917:

Now they remain to us forever young
      Who with such splendor gave their youth away;
Perpetual Spring is their inheritance,
      Though they have lived in Flanders and in France
A round of years, in one remembered day.

They drained life’s goblet as a joyous draught
      And left within the cup no bitter lees.
Sweetly they answered to the King’s behest,
      And gallantly fared forth upon a quest,
Beset by foes on land and on the seas.

So in the ancient world hath bloomed again
      The rose of old romance—red as of yore;
The flower of high emprise hath whitely blown
      Above the graves of those we call our own,
And we will know its fragrance evermore.

Now if their deeds were written with the stars,
      In golden letters on the midnight sky
They would not care. They were so young, and dear,
      They loved the best the things that were most near,
And gave no thought to glory far and high.

They need no shafts of marble pure and cold—
      No painted windows radiantly bright;
Across our hearts their names are carven deep—
      In waking dreams, and in the dreams of sleep,
They bring us still ineffable delight.

Methinks heaven’s gates swing open very wide
      To welcome in a host so fair and strong;
Perchance the unharmed angels as they sing,
      May envy these the battle-scars they bring,
And sigh e’er they take up the triumph song!

Image Credits

  1. Cover of the original edition of L.M. Montgomery’s novel Rilla of Ingleside, published by McClelland and Stewart (Toronto) and Frederick A. Stokes Company (New York) in 1921. Courtesy of the Internet Archive.
  2. Title page of the original edition of L.M. Montgomery’s novel Rilla of Ingleside, published by McClelland and Stewart in 1921. Courtesy of the Internet Archive.
  3. Detail from the title page of the original edition of L.M. Montgomery’s novel Rilla of Ingleside, published by McClelland and Stewart in 1921. Courtesy of the Internet Archive.
  4. Detail from Virna Sheard’s poem “The Young Knights,” appearing in her book Carry On!, published by Warwick Bros. & Rutter in 1917. Courtesy of Canadiana.
  5. Detail from Virna Sheard’s poem “The Young Knights,” appearing in Canadian Poems of the Great War, edited by John W. Garvin and published by McClelland and Stewart in 1918. Courtesy of the Internet Archive.
  6. Detail from Virna Sheard’s poem “The Young Knights,” appearing in the Globe (Toronto) on 23 May 1916. Courtesy of the Globe and Mail digital archives.
  7. Detail from the title page of the handwritten manuscript of L.M. Montgomery’s novel Rilla of Ingleside, written in 1919 and 1920. Courtesy of Archival and Special Collections, University of Guelph Library.

Bibliography

Montgomery, L.M. L.M. Montgomery’s Complete Journals: The Ontario Years, 1918–1921. Edited by Jen Rubio. N.p.: Rock’s Mills Press, 2017.

—. “Rilla of Ingleside.” MS. XZ5 MS A004, L.M. Montgomery Collection, Archival and Special Collections, University of Guelph Library.

—. Rilla of Ingleside. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1921. https://archive.org/details/rillaofingleside00mont_0/.

—. Rilla of Ingleside. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1921. https://archive.org/details/rillaingleside00montgoog.

Sheard, Virna. Carry On!, Toronto: Warwick Bros. & Rutter, 1917. https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.76272/8?r=0&s=1.

—. “The Young Knights.” Globe (Toronto), 23 May 1916, 4.

—. “The Young Knights.” In Canadian Poems of the Great War, edited by John W. Garvin, 219–20. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1918. https://archive.org/details/canadianpoemsofg00garv/page/218/mode/2up.

Wilmshurst, Rea. “L.M. Montgomery’s Use of Quotations and Allusions in the ‘Anne’ Books.” Canadian Children’s Literature / Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse 56 (1989): 15–45. https://ccl-lcj.ca/index.php/ccl-lcj/article/view/2413.

Next on Conversations: Round Table on Ontario Heritage Sites

Black-and-white image of a vintage typewriter, a polaroid photograph of a woman posing outside in a fancy dress, and three hardcover books stacked on top of each other. The text reads "Conversations about L.M. Montgomery," at at the bottom of the image is a URL for the project website.

I’m pleased to announce that our next Conversations about L.M. Montgomery event will be held this Saturday, November 6, at 2:00 p.m. (EST): a round table on three Ontario locations that were central to L.M. Montgomery’s life and writing and that are now heritage sites of significant historical significance. Joining us will be Kathy Wasylenky of Leaskdale (where Montgomery lived between 1911 and 1926), Linda Jackson-Hutton and Jack Hutton of Bala (where Montgomery vacationed in 1922), and Kathy Gastle of Norval (where Montgomery lived between 1926 and 1935), all of whom have devoted their time and their energy to preserving these places for the benefit of their communities and of Montgomery’s worldwide readership.

This event will occur live over Zoom (registration is required) and will be archived on YouTube. This event is free, and all readers of Montgomery’s books are warmly invited to join us. Hope to see you there!

UPDATE: The video for this event is now available on YouTube!

Cover Reveal: Twice upon a Time

It is with great pleasure that I share with you today the cover of Twice upon a Time: Selected Stories, 1898–1939, which will be published in spring 2022 as the third volume in The L.M. Montgomery Library. Because the book collects twenty-five stories that include early incarnations of well-known characters, storylines, conversations, and settings from Montgomery’s novels, I am thrilled that the cover art repurposes details from the first-edition covers of Anne of Avonlea and Chronicles of Avonlea (both of which were drawn by George Gibbs, whose work is featured on the cover of the original edition of Anne of Green Gables as well), especially since the placement of the framed images gives the impression that the Anne on the left is looking over her shoulder at the Anne on the right.

Twice upon a Time can now be pre-ordered from a number of vendors, including at a substantial discount from University of Toronto Press, or from your favourite bookseller.

Announcing The Blythes Are Quoted in Italian!

Cover art depicting a boy and two girls holding hands and standing in a lush field while dressed in period clothing, in a bucolic setting that consists of a pink house, a white picket fence, and a large tree in the background. Textual elements (in Italian) are as follows: Anna dai capelli rossi / Racconti dall’isola / Prima della guerra / Lucy Maud Montgomery / traduzione di Angela Ricci / Anna chiamatemi, ora una serie Netflix / Gallucci.
Cover art depicting a man and a woman embracing in a lush field while dressed in period clothing. Textual elements (in Italian) are as follows: Anna dai capelli rossi / Racconti dall’isola / Dopo la guerra / Lucy Maud Montgomery / a cura di Benjamin Lefebvre / traduzione di Angela Ricci / Anna chiamatemi, ora una serie Netflix / Gallucci.

I’m thrilled to share with you the news that my edition of The Blythes Are Quoted, L.M. Montgomery’s rediscovered final sequel to Anne of Green Gables (first published in 2009), is now available in a two-volume Italian translation entitled Racconti dall’isola (literally “Stories from the Island”), translated by Angela Ricci and published by Gallucci Editore, located in Rome. The subtitles of each volume reflect the way Montgomery divided the book into two parts: Prima della guerra (literally “Before the War”) and Dopo la guerra (literally “After the War”). This press has already published Italian translations of the eight earlier Anne books and Emily of New Moon, and I hope it will go on to translate Montgomery’s remaining books as well.

This is the fifth translation of The Blythes Are Quoted. It has appeared already in Finnish (Annan jäähyväiset, meaning “Anne’s Farewell”), translated by Marja Helanen-Ahtola; Polish (Ania z Wyspy Księcia Edwarda, meaning “Anne of Prince Edward Island”), translated by Paweł Ciemniewski; Japanese (An no Omoide no Hibi, meaning “Anne’s Days of Remembrance”), translated in two volumes by Mie Muraoka; and Brazilian Portuguese (Os Contos dos Blythes, meaning “The Tales of the Blythes,” and Os Poemas dos Blythes, meaning “The Poems of the Blythes”), translated in three volumes by Thalita Uba.

Because The Blythes Are Quoted was published after L.M. Montgomery’s death, the published edition is still protected by international copyright, and world rights (including translation rights) are controlled by Penguin Random House Canada. For any inquiries about translation rights to this title, please contact me.

Happy Thanksgiving from Cynthia!

Visual heading for L.M. Montgomery’s column “Around the Table,” signed Cynthia and appearing in thirty-five instalments in the Halifax Daily Echo between September 1901 and May 1902. From a microfilm housed at Library and Archives Canada.

Since today is Thanksgiving here in Canada, I wanted to take this opportunity not only to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving but also to share the words of L.M. Montgomery’s alter ego Cynthia, who wrote the following in the 23 November 1901 instalment of Montgomery’s “Around the Table” column in the Halifax Daily Echo:

Thanksgiving comes next week, so if I want to do any moralizing about it now is my chance. Yesterday Polly said in a dismal voice that she really didn’t know what she had to be thankful for. But she has lots of things, and so we all have, if we would only count them up. The trouble is, we would rather count up our troubles and groan and growl about them. That is human nature! 

Thanksgiving ought to be celebrated royally, not only in the letter, but in the spirit. At least, as some historic character has remarked, we can all be thankful “that things ain’t no wuss.”

Thanksgiving can, of course, be well and truly celebrated everywhere, but I think the Thanksgiving par excellence is one that is held in an old homestead. Thanksgiving in a new or rented house can’t have the same flavor as it has in a home where the very walls are permeated with the joys and sorrows of three or four generations. When the grown-up children come home to spend the day under the old roof, with perhaps a vacant chair to remind them of one who has gone to “a far country”—too far to even turn his footsteps back for that reunion—Thanksgiving is or ought to be all that its name implies. 

Aunt Janet is making mince meat for Thanksgiving up at our house already. Mince meat needs to be mellowed by age, you know. What would Thanksgiving be without mince pie? This is not a conundrum, but a serious, sober question. Well, it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving, that’s all. When folks leave mince pie out of the day it will be time for the Government to interfere.

In case you’re wondering why Cynthia is writing about Thanksgiving in late November given that Canada celebrates this holiday the second Monday in October, that’s because the holiday was celebrated in Canada at different points in October and November until 1957. For more information about the history of this holiday in Canada, see the entry on “Thanksgiving in Canada” by David Mills, Laura Neilson Bonikowsky, and Andrew McIntosh in The Canadian Encyclopedia.

Montgomery’s “Around the Table” column appears in its entirety in A Name for Herself: Selected Writings, 1891–1917, the first volume in The L.M. Montgomery Library, which is available from University of Toronto Press or from your favourite bookseller.

Next on Conversations: Round Table on Emily of New Moon

Two images against a black background: one of Green Gables House in Cavendish, PE, and one of L.M. Montgomery, in her thirties, posing outside.

I’m pleased to announce that Conversations about L.M. Montgomery will be returning for several events this fall! Coming up first on Saturday, September 25 at 2:00 p.m. (EST) is a round table on Montgomery’s 1923 novel Emily of New Moon: Brenton Dickieson, E. Holly Pike, and Kate Sutherland will discuss aspects of this celebrated book as a way to generate discussion among participants. This event will occur live over Zoom (registration is required) and will be archived on YouTube. This event is free, and all readers of Montgomery’s books are warmly invited to join us. Hope to see you there!