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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

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, I 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.

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.

『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.

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 (provided by Google Translate): 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.

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.

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.

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.

„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.

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.

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).

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.

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!

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.

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 Readathon: Emily Climbs

I am pleased to report that our discussion of L.M. Montgomery’s novel Emily of New Moon on the L.M. Montgomery Readathon concluded a few weeks ago and was a great success. Once again, Andrea McKenzie and I have been blown away by the level of enthusiasm and engagement from participants and by the number of new Montgomery friends we’ve made since we started this project in the early weeks of the pandemic. When Andrea and I talked about which book we’d like to cover next, we were immediately in agreement that we wanted to carry on with this book’s sequel, Emily Climbs. This we’ll begin tomorrow, September 20, discussing two chapters a week until the middle of December. In addition to discussion questions for each chapter, posts will cover historical context, links to Montgomery’s life and body of work, differences between editions, book covers, and the way the book was advertised and reviewed when it was published in 1925, and participants will take turns reading chapters aloud. All L.M. Montgomery readers are welcome to join us, including those who are reading this book for the first time.

Announcing Twice upon a Time

Placeholder cover for Twice upon a Time: Selected Stories, 1898–1939

I’m very proud to announce the forthcoming publication, in spring 2022, of Twice upon a Time: Selected Stories, 1898–1939, the third volume in The L.M. Montgomery Library, a collection of L.M. Montgomery’s short stories that reveals how she revised her periodical fiction for her books, including Anne of Green Gables and its ever-popular sequels.

Although L.M. Montgomery (1874–1942) is best remembered for the twenty-two book-length works of fiction that she published in her lifetime, from Anne of Green Gables (1908) to Anne of Ingleside (1939), she also contributed some five hundred short stories and serials to a wide range of North American and British periodicals from 1895 to 1940. While most of these stories demonstrate her ability to produce material that would fit the mainstream periodical fiction market as it evolved across almost half a century, many of them also contain early incarnations of characters, storylines, conversations, and settings that she would rework for inclusion in her novels and collections of linked short stories.

In Twice upon a Time, the third volume in The L.M. Montgomery Library, Benjamin Lefebvre collects and discusses over two dozen stories from across Montgomery’s career as a short fiction writer, many of them available in book form for the first time. The volume offers a rare glimpse into Montgomery’s creative process in adapting her periodical work for her books, which continue to fascinate readers all over the world.

Twice upon a Time is preceded by A Name for Herself: Selected Writings, 1891–1917 and A World of Songs: Selected Poems, 1894–1921, the first two volumes in this series, which you can order from your favourite bookseller or at a substantial discount from the University of Toronto Press website. This book has been in the works for several years, so it is with great anticipation on my part that it will be available soon to Montgomery’s worldwide readership. If you’d like to receive more information about this book as it becomes available—including the cover, preordering information, and some sneak previews—please subscribe to this blog by entering your email address in the box below and follow this website on Facebook and on Twitter.

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Next on Readathon: Emily of New Moon

Frontispiece by M.L. Kirk in the original edition of Emily of New Moon (1923); courtesy of the Internet Archive

Andrea McKenzie and I are pleased to announce that starting on Monday, June 14, we will begin our next discussion on the L.M. Montgomery Readathon. When we launched this discussion group on Facebook in March 2020, near the beginning of the pandemic, we hoped that we might reach a few dozen interested participants readers, but as our discussion of our first book, Rilla of Ingleside, began to take shape, we were stunned when the amount of interested readers who wanted to join the group kept growing. Once we finished Rilla of Ingleside last June, we decided to keep the conversation going, first with Jane of Lantern Hill (July–September 2020) and later with The Blue Castle (September 2020–February 2021) and Chronicles of Avonlea (March–May 2021).

With the group now consisting of almost eight hundred members, we have selected Emily of New Moon as our fifth Readathon book, and starting Monday, we will work our way through each chapter week by week until the end of August. Once again, recordings of each chapter by group participants will be available on YouTube, and each chapter will be accompanied by discussion questions as well as posts about literary allusions, textual variants between the first edition and a widely circulated recent edition, book covers from around the world, as well as background information about fashion, technology, education, the natural world, and Montgomery’s life.

Emily of New Moon was published in 1923, fifteen years after the appearance of Anne of Green Gables, and it appeared two years after Rilla of Ingleside, which Montgomery had vowed would be the last book about Anne. The book reflects Montgomery’s renewed creative energy as she wrote it, not only because this was her first non-Anne book-length work of fiction in a decade but also because she had been wanting to write about this character for quite some time. And as a book focusing on a child writer, Emily of New Moon is a somewhat more autobiographical work than the Anne series. As Montgomery wrote to her penpal Ephraim Weber in 1921, “People were never right in saying I was ‘Anne’ but, in some respects, they will be right if they write me down as Emily.”

Along with its two sequels, Emily Climbs and Emily’s Quest, Emily of New Moon has been celebrated not only as a work of fiction of superior literary merit but also as a work of fiction that has inspired subsequent generations of writers. Alice Munro, Jane Urquhart, and P.K. Page wrote afterwords to New Canadian Library editions of the three books that appeared in 1989, and the three books are featured prominently in Arlene Perly Rae’s book Everybody’s Favourites: Canadians Talk about Books That Changed Their Lives (1997). Moreover, a television series based on Emily of New Moon and its sequels aired starting in the late 1990s and ran for four seasons, all of which can now be viewed on YouTube.

All readers who are interested in learning more about this fascinating book are welcome to join the conversation on Facebook. Hope to see you there!

Next on Readathon: Chronicles of Avonlea

This week the L.M. Montgomery Readathon—an interactive group that Andrea McKenzie and I curate on Facebook—began its discussion of our fourth Montgomery book, Chronicles of Avonlea, a volume of linked short stories. We have just surpassed 700 participants, people from all over the world who are rediscovering L.M. Montgomery’s works and seeking community during this time of global uncertainty. If you haven’t yet joined the conversation, please do!

Published in summer 1912, Chronicles of Avonlea is L.M. Montgomery’s fifth book, preceded by Anne of Green Gables (1908), Anne of Avonlea (1909), Kilmeny of the Orchard (1910), and The Story Girl (1911). All four of these books were bestsellers in Canada and the U.S., although Anne of Green Gables continued to be the strongest seller. Somewhat understandingly from his point of view, Montgomery’s publisher, L.C. Page, was keen to publish more Montgomery books, particularly ones that were linked to Anne and might approximate or even surpass the sales success of Montgomery’s first book.

Because Montgomery couldn’t write books fast enough to please her publisher and because she was reluctant to write a third Anne book because she wanted to resist the inevitable romantic conclusion, Page—who had already suggested that she postpone The Story Girl and expand a nine-chapter serial entitled “Una of the Garden” as the basis for Kilmeny of the Orchard—asked her to compile a volume of linked short stories set in the same geographical environment as Anne of Green Gables and to feature Anne whenever possible, thinking that such a volume would be seen as the next best thing to a new novel about Anne. By this point Montgomery had published hundreds of short stories in North American periodicals, so she looked through her scrapbooks to see which stories could be revised for this project and ended up sending close to thirty revised stories for Page for consideration.

The twelve stories that made the final cut were first published in a range of North American periodicals between 1904 and 1912 (only “Old Lady Lloyd” has not yet been found in its original incarnation). Here they are, in chronological order:

“Little Joscelyn.” The Christian Endeavor World (Boston), 1 September 1904, 988–89.

“The Hurrying of Ludovic.” The Canadian Magazine (Toronto), May 1905, 67–71.

“Aunt Olivia’s Beau.” The Designer (New York), June 1905, 196–200.

“Ol’ Man Reeves’ Girl.” The Farm and Fireside (Springfield, OH), 15 June 1905, 14–15. (Revised as “Old Man Shaw’s Girl.”)

“A Case of Atavism.” The Reader Magazine (Indianapolis), November 1905, 658–66. (Revised as “The Winning of Lucinda.”)

“Pa Rudge’s Purchase.” The Christian Endeavor World (Boston), 22 February 1906, 421–22. (Revised as “Pa Sloane’s Purchase.”)

“The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham’s.” Everybody’s Magazine (New York), April 1907, 495–503.

“The End of a Quarrel.” American Agriculturist (New York), 20 July 1907, 56, 58–59.

“The Courting of Prissy Strong.” The Housewife (New York), July 1909, 12–13.

“Miracle at Mayfield.” The Christian Endeavor World (Boston), 28 October 1909, 69–70. (Revised as “The Miracle at Carmody.”)

“Each in His Own Tongue.” The Delineator (New York), October 1910, 247, 324–28.

Still, although there’s no record of the process of selecting and arranging the stories in this volume (most of the remaining stories would appear in Further Chronicles of Avonlea in 1920, but that’s a story for another day), there are some clues in the first published edition that indicate that Page and/or Montgomery considered a few arrangements before they finalized the contents of the book.

Title page of 1912 edition of Chronicles of Avonlea
Title page of 1912 edition of Chronicles of Avonlea, published by L.C. Page and Company. Courtesy of Hathi Trust Digital Library.

First, although the title on the cover appears simply as Chronicles of Avonlea, the title page adds an explanatory subtitle that tries to solidify the connection between this book and the character for whom Montgomery was best known:

In which Anne Shirley of Green Gables and Avonlea plays some part, and which have to do with other personalities and events, including The Hurrying of Ludovic, Old Lady Lloyd, The Training of Felix, Little Joscelyn, The Winning of Lucinda, Old Man Shaw’s Girl, Aunt Olivia’s Beau, The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham’s, Pa Sloane’s Purchase, The Courting of Prissy Strong, The Miracle at Carmody, and finally The End of a Quarrel.

The order of the stories here is the same as what appears in the book, and the only difference is that “Each in His Own Tongue” is renamed “The Training of Felix”—perhaps this was Page’s suggestion, given that the story had originally been published as “Each in His Own Tongue.” But an ad for the book at the end of this edition reads quite differently, with many of the titles referring to stories that ultimately appeared in Further Chronicles:

In which Anne Shirley of Green Gables and Avonlea plays some part, and which have to do with other personalities and events, including The Purchase of Sloane, The Baby Which Came to Jane, The Mystery of Her Father’s Daughter and of Tannis of the Flats, The Promise of Lucy Ellen, The Beau and Aunt Olivia, The Deferment of Hester, and finally of The Hurrying of Ludovic.

Back matter ad for Chronicles of Avonlea
Back matter ad for Chronicles of Avonlea, appearing in the 1912 edition published by L.C. Page and Company. Courtesy of Hathi Trust Digital Library.

Although we don’t know how involved Montgomery was in making this selection and arrangement, the final, published version was certainly a hit with reviewers and a strong seller with the general public. Although some reviewers still yearned for another novel with Anne as the protagonist, most of the reviews had high praise for Montgomery’s skill as a short story writer. Here are some representative samples from reviews of the time, all of which are included or excerpted in Volume 3 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader.

“In this volume the author establishes her right to be considered one of the best short story writers in our country.”
Oakland Tribune

“All the insight and charm of the Anne books, with the added grace of a more finished craftsmanship, render this an exceptional collection; and a few of the chapters will take very high rank in the short-story domain.”
Christian Science Monitor

“To say that one sketch was better than another would be to insinuate that the latter was not just as good as it possibly could be. Which would be insinuating something utterly untrue.”
Mail and Empire (Toronto)

“Avonlea might be any one of those home towns to which wandering sons and daughters hurry back for their summer holiday; a village where every little white house has its grass plot, flower beds and vegetable garden; where the air is sweet with rose odors in June and apples in September; an out-of-the way spot where quaint characters develop idiosyncrasies.”
The Publishers’ Weekly

“The charm of the author’s style was never more in evidence. The stories ‘tell themselves’ with a readiness and naturalness which is the perfection of literary skill. . . . These ‘Chronicles of Avonlea’ demonstrate anew the truth that simple, quiet lives may be full of romance and of tragedy, even if the latter be bloodless.”
Boston Times

“The author shows a wonderful knowledge of humanity, great insight and warm-heartedness in the manner in which some of the scenes are treated, and the sympathetic way the gentle peculiarities of the characters are brought out.”
Boston Globe

“Instinctively one feels that the men and women, the boys and girls, the very cats and dogs of her stories are human and real; and they remain not creatures of the imagination but actual friends whose pleasures we have shared, whose griefs we have borne, and whose good fortunes we rejoice over. The authoress, too, is not without a saving sense of humor that lends the quaint charm to her stories that mark their individuality.”
Saint John Globe

“The author has won a fine reputation as a depictor of child life, but it is a mistake to consider that she is limited to that life. Indeed her finest work is to be found wherein she gives us the relation of the child and the adult.”
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

“These chronicles are of the best work that Miss Montgomery has done. The characters are real, living people, full of human weaknesses and homely virtues.”
The Canadian Magazine

Chronicles of Avonlea was part of the basis for the ever-popular television series Road to Avonlea (1990–1996), and it also showcases Montgomery’s strengths as a short-story writer. As such, it’s a collection that’s certainly worth revisiting. Please join the conversation on the L.M. Montgomery Readathon!

Year in Review: 2020

This morning, while on our way to a socially distant walk in the woods with a few family members, my partner and I drove past a small grocery store whose outside sign read “Don’t worry. 2020 is almost over!”

That may certainly capture a larger societal feeling about the year that’s drawing to a close in less than an hour (at least in my time zone), and it may explain why I’ve been seeing fewer “best of” retrospective lists this month than I have in previous years (or maybe I’m just less inclined to notice them). Still, although 2020 has undeniably been difficult in so many ways, it’s worth looking back on this year in terms of new publications on L.M. Montgomery as well as looking ahead to projects that have already been announced for 2021. It’s also worth considering what anniversaries occurred this year and what they can remind us about the past, the present, and the future of Montgomery scholarship.

In looking back on this year, I’m reminded of the (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) comments Montgomery made as her alter ego, “Cynthia,” in the 30 December 1901 instalment of “Around the Table,” the newspaper column she published over a nine-month period in the Halifax Daily Echo (and whose text appears in its entirety for the first time in A Name for Herself).

The end of the year is, as a general thing, somewhat given over to retrospection. We like to overhaul our memories as well as our consciences, on New Year’s eve, as we sit before a dying fire—it must always be dying to be properly romantic—watching the Old Year out. We grow dreamy and sad and a wee bit sentimental. We recall the loves and hatreds, the pleasures and sorrows, the successes and failures of the past twelve months. We think of our flirtations, and wonder where the Toms, Dicks and Harrys are now, and if they have forgotten. We sigh softly, and quote scraps of poetry that occur to us as appropriate. In short, we get out Memory’s treasure-box and rummage among its motley contents. We have the vague regret that everyone experiences at the turning of a life page. Good or bad, earnest or frivolous, it is written and filed away in the archives of Eternity. We will never have a chance to correct its mistakes. Old Father Time has no proof-readers.

Then the clock strikes twelve and we open the door to let the Old Year go limping out and the New Year come joyously in. “The King is dead. Long live the King!”

This past month, I read through several items of scholarship that made good use of the extensive Alice Munro papers at the University of Calgary, and I was fascinated by the attempts of scholars to use surviving drafts, fragments, and correspondence in order to piece together Munro’s process of writing and revision, especially in terms of her collaboration with her agent and with various editors with whom she worked. I have to admit feeling envious of those scholars given the numerous gaps in Montgomery’s papers, especially pertaining to her short stories, poems, and miscellaneous pieces, which have been of particular interest to me over the last several years. Still, I’m very grateful for the Montgomery materials that do survive, including journals, letters, some manuscripts and typescripts, and scrapbooks. This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of The Green Gables Letters from L.M. Montgomery to Ephraim Weber, 1905–1909 (released in 1960) and the fortieth anniversary of the publication of My Dear Mr. M: Letters to G.B. MacMillan from L.M. Montgomery (released in 1980), two volumes that, along with the first reprinting in book form of her celebrity memoir “The Alpine Path” in 1974, showed readers for the first time that Montgomery’s life writing was just as fascinating as her fiction, and this has certainly been proven true with the publication of five volumes of Montgomery’s selected journals starting in 1985 and seven volumes to date of her unabridged journals starting in 2012.

This year also marks one hundred years since the publication of Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920), an anniversary that highlights the importance of placing Montgomery’s work in its historical and literary (as well as biographical) context. While the vast amount of surviving life writing makes biographical readings of the primary work so tempting, it’s also worth paying attention to some of the broader external circumstances that shaped the words appearing on the page, at least as far as these can be pieced together through surviving documents. This collection of linked short stories is particularly fascinating as evidence of a battle of wills between Montgomery and her first publisher, L.C. Page, given that Page manipulated her into agreeing to its publication but ended up violating some of the terms of that agreement in ways that she felt did damage to her literary reputation, prompting her to fight him in court for eight years until the book was withdrawn from circulation. Further Chronicles formed part of the basis of the ever-popular television series Road to Avonlea (1990–1996), which celebrates its thirtieth anniversary this year, an anniversary that reminds us of Montgomery’s status as an enduringly popular author whose fan base includes consumers of adaptations in addition to readers of her books.

In terms of publications, 2020 began and ended with The Shining Scroll, the annual newsletter of the L.M. Montgomery Literary Society of Minnesota that’s edited by Mary Beth Cavert and Carolyn Strom Collins, two longtime contributors to the field of Montgomery studies. Its 2019 edition, released in January, and its 2020 edition, released just a few days ago, are filled with news items and original research on topics as varied as the centenary of the 1919 silent film adaptation of Anne of Green Gables, the handwritten manuscript of Anne, heritage and tourist sites in Prince Edward Island, and some newly discovered postcards that Montgomery sent to her Scottish pen pal, G.B. MacMillan.

This year also saw the publication of a number of trade books, including Kallie George’s picture book If I Couldn’t Be Anne (which follows Goodnight, Anne, released in 2018), Brooke Jorden’s abridgement of Anne of Green Gables for the Lit for Little Hands series published by Familius, Crystal S. Chan’s manga adaptation of Anne of Green Gables for Manga Classics, Josée Ouimet’s biography of Montgomery (one of the only secondary sources about Montgomery to appear in French) for the Bonjour l’histoire series, and Rachel Dodge’s The Anne of Green Gables Devotional: A Chapter-by-Chapter Companion for Kindred Spirits.

Book-length scholarship this year included Katja Lee’s Limelight: Canadian Women and the Rise of Celebrity Autobiography, which places Montgomery in conversation with fellow Canadian women including Nellie L. McClung, Margaret Trudeau, and Shania Twain, and a new paperback edition of my three-volume critical anthology The L.M. Montgomery Reader, with volume 1 consisting of essays by and interviews with Montgomery along with commentary on her work throughout her career as a novelist, volume 2 narrating her critical reputation in the decades since her death, and volume 3 turning to the book review as a largely overlooked repository of critical discussion.

In addition, this year saw the publication of a wide number of book chapters, journal articles, and reviews focusing on topics such as environmental history, correspondence, spirituality, adaptation, the archive, translations, and fan fiction, including some work dated 2019 but that was released or that I came across this past year:

  • Claire E. Campbell, “‘A Window Looking Seaward’: Finding Environmental History in the Writing of L.M. Montgomery,” in The Greater Gulf: Essays on the Environmental History of the Gulf of St. Lawrence
  • Jaclyn Carter, review of L.M. Montgomery and War, edited by Andrea McKenzie and Jane Ledwell, in University of Toronto Quarterly
  • Mary Beth Cavert, “L.M. Montgomery’s Letters to Scotland: Reading between the Lines” and “L.M. Montgomery’s Picture Postcards to George Boyd MacMillan 1904–1941,” in Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies
  • Brenton D.G. Dickieson, “C.S. Lewis’s Theory of Sehnsucht and L.M. Montgomery’s Flash: Vocation and the Niminous,” in The Faithful Imagination: Papers from the 2018 Frances White Ewbank Colloquium on C.S. Lewis & Friends, Taylor University
  • Brenton D.G. Dickieson, “Rainbow Valley as Embodied Heaven: Initial Explorations into L.M. Montgomery’s Spirituality in Fiction,” in Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies
  • Jennifer Douglas, “Letting Grief Move Me: Thinking through the Affective Dimensions of Personal Recordkeeping,” in Moving Archives
  • Susan Erdmann and Barbara Gawrońska Pettersson, “Norwegian Translations of Anne of Green Gables: Omissions and Textual Manipulations,” in Languages—Cultures—Worldviews: Focus on Translation
  • Diana Floegel, “‘Write the Story You Want to Read’: World-Queering through Slash Fanfiction Creation,” in Journal of Documentation
  • Irene Gammel and Jaclyn Marcus, review of The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 1: A Life in Print, in Canadian Literature
  • Carla Kristmar Harrison, review of Anne of Green Gables: The Original Manuscript, by L.M. Montgomery, edited by Carolyn Strom Collins, in Canadian Literature
  • Ceilidh Hart, review of A Name for Herself: Selected Writings, 1891–1917 and A World of Songs: Selected Poems, 1894–1921, in Canadian Literature
  • Laura Leden, “For Children Only: Abridgement of Crossover Characteristics in the Finnish Translation of L.M. Montgomery’s Emily Trilogy,” in Translating Boundaries: Constraints, Limits, Opportunities
  • Margaret Mackey, “Reading in and out of Order: Living in and around an Extended Fiction,” in Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies
  • Hannah McGregor, review of The Next Instalment: Serials, Sequels, and Adaptations of Nellie L. McClung, L.M. Montgomery, and Mazo de la Roche, by Wendy Roy, in Canadian Literature
  • Piotr Oczko, “The Green Gables Utopia: On the Novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery,” in Wieloglos
  • Dorota Pielorz, “Does Each Generation Have Its Own Ania? Canonical and Polemical Polish Translations of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables,” in Negotiating Translation and Transcreation of Children’s Literature: From Alice to the Moomins
  • E. Holly Pike, “Reading the Book as Object and Thing in L.M. Montgomery’s Emily Series,” in Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies
  • Dawn Sardella-Ayres and Ashley N. Reese, “Where to from Here? Emerging Conversations on Girls’ Literature and Girlhood,” in Girlhood Studies
  • Kate Scarth, “From Anne of Green Gables to Anne of the Suburbs: Lucy Maud Montgomery Reimagines Home in Anne of the Island,” in Women’s Writing
  • Catherine Sheldrick Ross and Åsa Warnqvist, “Reading L.M. Montgomery: What Adult Swedish and Canadian Readers Told Us,” in Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies
  • Heather Thomson, “On Reading L.M. Montgomery’s Essays,” in Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies
  • Bonnie J. Tulloch, “Canadian ‘Anne-Girl[s]’: Literary Descendents of Montgomery’s Redheaded Heroine,” in Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies

What’s been announced for 2021? So far, quite a bit! Two new print adaptations will be released in the spring: Brina Starler’s Anne of Manhattan (William Morrow), which is billed as “a romantic, charming, and hilarious modern adaptation” of Anne of Green Gables that depicts Anne’s experiences as a graduate student in present-day New York City, and Louise Michalos’s Marilla before Anne (Nimbus Publishing), which focuses on eighteen-year-old Marilla’s coming of age, set in Avonlea and Halifax. Nimbus Publishing will also release Eri Muraoka’s Anne’s Cradle: The Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka, Japanese Translator of Anne of Green Gables, translated by Cathy Hirano, this spring, which promises to add considerably to our understanding of the international circulation of Montgomery’s work. In addition to Kallie George’s third Anne picture book, Merry Christmas, Anne, Tundra Books will release Anne’s School Days, the third of George’s abridgements of Anne of Green Gables, following Anne Arrives (2018) and Anne’s Kindred Spirits (2019).

And speaking of abridgements, New York’s Starry Forest Books plans to release three abridgements of Anne of Green Gables this spring, each part of a separate series of abridgements of classic works of literature and targeting a specific age range: a Baby’s Classics abridgement by Alex Fabrizio (24 pp.), a Classic Stories abridgement by Saviour Pirotta (40 pp.), and a Classic Adventures abridgement by Jacqueline Dembar Greene (64 pp.). Each of these series will place Anne alongside new abridgements of many other classic works of literature by authors ranging from Alcott and Baum to Shakespeare and the Brothers Grimm.

I’d like to end this post by recalling the words of Captain Jim in Anne’s House of Dreams, after he and his guests, as Cynthia describes in “Around the Table,” open the lighthouse door to welcome in the new year as the clock strikes twelve. “I wish you all the best year of your lives, mates. I reckon that whatever the New Year brings us will be the best the Great Captain has for us—and somehow or other we’ll all make port in a good harbour.”

There’s a lot of uncertainty about what the world will experience in 2021, but, like Captain Jim, I remain hopeful that “somehow or other we’ll all make port in a good harbour.” And in the meantime, there is always something new to discover about L.M. Montgomery.

Next on Conversations: Trivia Contest!

Thanks to all of you who joined us for our second instalment in our Conversations about L.M. Montgomery initiative, a round table discussion of Rilla of Ingleside, on Zoom earlier this month. That conversation has now been archived on YouTube. I’m pleased to announce our third and final instalment for 2020, which is a trivia contest that opens today, coinciding with the anniversary of L.M. Montgomery’s birth. Participants are invited to complete the quiz on their own time and to join us over Zoom on Saturday, December 12, at 2:00 p.m. (EST) to find out the answers and to watch a bonus round for attendees with the highest scores. Break a leg!

New Reviews, 1919–1922

Cover of The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 3: A Legacy in Review (paperback edition)

One of my previous books, The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 3: A Legacy in Review, contains the full text of almost 400 reviews of the twenty-four books Montgomery published within her lifetime, excerpts from dozens more, and a narrative overview of reviews of an additional twenty-four books attributed to Montgomery and published between 1960 and 2013. Although I blogged quite a bit about reviews around the time I was putting this book together, once it was published in 2015 I was ready to move on to something else. Not surprisingly given that I’ve continued to comb through newspapers and magazines looking for Montgomery’s short stories, poems, and miscellaneous pieces since then, I do come across new book reviews periodically. Normally when that happens I just update my master list and file them away on my hard drive, but this week I decided to post some reviews I’ve come across recently because one of them echoes my recent blog post about Montgomery and Jane Austen.

Here are four reviews in total of three books that Montgomery published at the height of her career—or, strictly speaking, of two books that Montgomery published at the height of her career and of one book that her unscrupulous first publisher manipulated her into publishing around this time.

First, a review of Rainbow Valley that appeared in the 1 January 1920 issue of Farmers’ Magazine, published out of Toronto:

The light deftness of literary touch which is the gift of L.M. Montgomery is something that even a Jane Austen might almost envy, for she has the power of setting before us the events and people of everyday life in a typical Canadian community, and of showing us with a fine, sympathetic insight the humor, the beauty and the pathos of what might have passed by us as commonplace or unworthy of attention.

“Rainbow Valley” is peopled with children whose pranks upset the serenity of the “even tenor of the way,” but in whose boisterousness there is nothing of downright wickedness.

And as every community has its share of persons who are busily engaged in “minding other people’s business,” here we have those who are greatly interested in the widowed condition of the occupant of the manse and the seeming wildness of his unmothered children.

At the back of it all the author sees the guiding hand of Romance who weaves before our eyes a truly delightful pattern of life.

Second, a review of Rainbow Valley that appeared in the 27 November 1919 issue of The Christian Endeavor World, a religious periodical published out of Boston:

The scene of L.M. Montgomery’s latest novel, “Rainbow Valley,” is Prince Edward Island, which the author knows and loves so well. Anne Shirley, the Anne of “Anne of Green Gables” and other books, appears again in this volume, fresh and bright and delightful as ever. The centre of the story, however, is the manse to which has come a rather absent-minded minister, a widower with a family. The story deals with the adventures of the young folks, but the chief charm of the book is the humor that glows throughout. The author has succeeded in clothing the common interests of country life with the glory of romance, and has invested with interest the every-day talk and commonplace events of the community. “Rainbow Valley” makes delightful reading; the children are so human, so full of fun and harmless mischief, that they win our sympathy at once.

Third, a review of Further Chronicles of Avonlea that appeared in the 27 May 1920 issue of The Christian Endeavor World:

L.M. Montgomery has done for Prince Edward Island what “Ian Maclaren” did for Drumtochty. It is no small achievement to create so interesting and charming a figure as Anne of Green Gables and to people the region about Avonlea with real characters. Miss Montgomery has the gift of swift and accurate characterization, and not a little of the pleasure in reading her books comes from those flashes of insight that she puts into a few winged words. The present volume, “Further Chronicles of Avonlea,” is a book of short stories. Lovers of the island will be delighted with the fidelity of the pictures. Some of the tales touch deep feelings; others are in a lighter vein, like “Aunt Cynthia’s Persian Cat,”—a cat which causes a good deal of trouble by reverting to its primitive instincts,—or “The Materializing of Cecil,” a thoroughly enjoyable love story with its striking conclusion. These Chronicles are clean and sweet, and one feels better after reading them.

And fourth, a review of Rilla of Ingleside that appeared in the 18 May 1922 issue of The Christian Endeavor World:

In her latest novel, “Rilla of Ingleside,” Miss L.M. Montgomery has given us a faithful as well as an interesting picture of how the war came to a Canadian village, how it affected the people, and what changes it made. Rilla is the daughter of the doctor—a daughter, by the way, of Anne of Green Gables—and at first is rather self-centred. The war and the conditions it brings impose new tasks upon her and bring out latent powers. What is here told of the eager looking for war news must have been true of many places, and the tragedies, the boys that never came back, are but samples of war’s awful toll. There is a fine love-story in this tale, which is written with Miss Montgomery’s well-known charm and genial touch. There is in the book a good deal of laughter, sunshine darting through clouds.

What do you notice in these short, unsigned evaluations of these three Montgomery books? What elements are these books praised for? How do those elements dovetail with the reasons people continue to read (and reread) her books today? What do these comments suggest about what audiences these books target in terms of age or gender?

Starting Soon: Conversations about L.M. Montgomery

When Andrea McKenzie told me last March about her idea to start a Rilla of Ingleside Readathon, she mentioned that she wanted to find new ways to connect with fellow L.M. Montgomery readers using the tools of the digital age (in this case, Facebook). After all, it’s been well documented that Montgomery’s novels have the power to bring people together, and Andrea thought it would be worthwhile for a group of people to read (or reread) Rilla of Ingleside together, partly as a distraction from the pandemic, partly because there’s such rich cultural and literary context to explore in that novel, and partly because it depicts a community of people working together to get through a different kind of global crisis (in this case, four years of war). The level of response from readers all over the world surpassed our expectations completely, and the group—now called L.M. Montgomery Readathon—recently started discussing a third Montgomery book, The Blue Castle.

In light of the level of enthusiasm that the Readathon has received, Andrea and I soon started talking about additional ways we would connect virtually with fellow Montgomery readers around the world. To that end, I am pleased to announce Conversations about L.M. Montgomery, a series of virtual conversations and activities that will be hosted over Zoom and archived on a YouTube page. For this initiative, we reached out to Melanie J. Fishbane, Sarah Goff, Daniela Janes, Caroline E. Jones, Yuka Kajihara, and Kate Sutherland, and together the eight of us form the steering committee.

In figuring out a format for a series of virtual events, we were motivated by the wide range of workshops, conferences, events, meetings, and conversations that have happened on Zoom, but we were also mindful of the well-documented phenomenon known as “Zoom fatigue.” And so, instead of an all-day or a multi-day virtual conference, we’ve opted for a series of short events (round tables, formal papers, workshops, informal conversations, and readings), scattered throughout the year, for which any Montgomery reader who downloads the Zoom app can join us.

Early cover art for /The Blue Castle/, by L.M. Montgomery

Our first event will be a round table discussion of The Blue Castle and will take place on Saturday, 17 October 2020, at 2:00 p.m. (EST). It will feature three engaging and knowledgeable speakers: Tara K. Parmiter (New York University) will speak on The Blue Castle and the environment, Rachel McMillan (Toronto) will speak on The Blue Castle and romance, and Caroline E. Jones (Austin) will speak on The Blue Castle and the figure of the bad girl.

Interested participants should register in advance. First-time readers of the book are warned that the discussion will contain plot spoilers. Questions? Suggestions? Comment on this post below or get in touch through the contact form. Please subscribe to this blog via email to get all the latest updates.

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A Note on John Foster’s Thistle Harvest

I started writing this as a post in the L.M. Montgomery Readathon, where we’re currently reading and discussing chapter 3 of The Blue Castle, but since it’s rather on the long side for a post, I thought I’d turn it into a blog entry instead. Comments welcome, either here or on Facebook, but please—no spoilers!

Right in the first chapter of The Blue Castle, the narrator establishes the unique, almost undefinable appeal that the work of John Foster has for Valancy: “She could hardly say what it was—some tantalising lure of a mystery never revealed—some hint of a great secret just a little further on—some faint, elusive echo of lovely, forgotten things—John Foster’s magic was indefinable.” Although the librarian notes that John Foster’s books are popular with the library’s patrons, she doesn’t see the appeal of them herself, whereas Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles consider all pleasure reading to be “idleness,” meaning that John Foster’s “magic” is not only indefinable but also not shared by everyone. In chapter three, Valancy “open[s] Thistle Harvest guiltily at random” when she’s supposed to be looking for her thimble, and the experience of rereading just one paragraph makes her feel “the strange exhilaration of spirit that always came momentarily to her when she dipped into one of John Foster’s books.” In other words, John Foster’s books are a form of bibliotherapy for Valancy: they centre her, calm her down, distract her from her problems, and make her feel as one with the world.

It may surprise you—and it may not—to learn that the source of this extract from John Foster’s Thistle Harvest is none other than L.M. Montgomery. As Elizabeth Rollins Epperly reveals in her 2007 book Through Lover’s Lane: L.M. Montgomery’s Photography and Visual Imagination, in creating these extracts from John Foster’s books Montgomery borrowed from a quartet of nature essays she’d published in The Canadian Magazine (Toronto) in 1911: “Spring in the Woods,” “The Woods in Summer,” “The Woods in Autumn,” and “The Woods in Winter.” Although the essays are not set anywhere explicitly, for Epperly they are “memory pictures of her favourite home in nature, Lover’s Lane.” And although Montgomery mentioned to one of her correspondents that she’d written these essays in mid-1909, they ended up being published in the midst of perhaps her most significant life transition: after her grandmother died in March 1911, she left her beloved home in Cavendish, spent three months with relatives in nearby Park Corner, married her longtime fiancé at the beginning of July, honeymooned with him in England and Scotland, moved with him to Leaskdale, Ontario, to start her new responsibilities as the wife of a Presbyterian minister in an entirely new community, and soon became pregnant with her first child, who would be born the following summer.

Here are the first two paragraphs from “Spring in the Woods,” which correspond almost exactly to the extract from Thistle Harvest included in chapter 3 of The Blue Castle:

The woods are so human that to know them we must live with them. An occasional saunter through them, keeping, it may be, to the well trodden paths, will never admit us to their intimacy. If we wish to be near friends we must seek them out and win them by frequent reverent visits at all hours, by morning, by noon, and by night, and at all seasons, in spring and in summer, in autumn and in winter. Otherwise, we can never really know them, and any pretence we can make to the contrary will never impose on them. They have their own effective way of keeping aliens at a distance and shutting their heart to mere casual sight-seers.

Believe me, it is of no use to seek the woods from any motive except sheer love of them; they will find us out at once and hide all their sweet, world-old secrets from us. But if they know we come to them because we love them they will be very kind to us and give us such treasure of beauty and delight as is not bought or sold in market nor even can be paid for in coin of earthly minting; for the woods when they give at all give unstintedly and hold nothing back from their true worshippers. We must go to them lovingly, humbly, patiently, watchfully, and we shall learn what poignant loveliness lurks in the wild places and silent intervals, lying under starshine and sunset, what cadences of unearthly music are harped on aged pine boughs or crooned in copses of fir, what delicate savours exhale from mosses and ferns in sunny corners or on damp brooklands, what dreams and myths and legends of an older time haunt them, what unsuspected tintings glimmer in their dark demesnes and glow in their al- luring by-ways; for it is the by-ways that lead to the heart of the woods, and we must not fail to follow them if we would know the forests and be known of them.

The last sentence from the corresponding extract from Thistle Harvest occurs several paragraphs later in this first “Woods” article:

This is where the immortal heart of the wood will beat against ours and its subtle life will steal into our veins and make us its own forever, so that no matter where we go or how wide we wander in the noisy ways of cities or over lone paths of sea, we shall yet be drawn back to the forest to find our most enduring kinship.

I blogged a few days ago about Montgomery’s “self-repetitions,” and of course this is yet another example of her doing so in a way that would have been difficult for readers at the time to pick up on, given that the “Woods” articles had been published in a periodical fifteen years before The Blue Castle and were not collected in book form until I included them in Volume 1 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader. But what I want to draw your attention to are two complications with this instance of self-repetition.

The first is that Valancy’s stated experience of reading John Foster’s work—seemingly straightforward nature writing that’s really so much more than that for readers who are willing to take these books seriously—is remarkably similar to the way innumerable readers of Montgomery’s books have described the impact that her work has had on their lives. This response to Montgomery’s work is hardly a new phenomenon—by 1926, she’d already received enough fan mail to have a clear sense of the impact her books were having on readers. So what is Montgomery doing here by describing Valancy as having a similarly “indefinable” reaction to John Foster’s work, but cloaking herself as the author of that work and attributing it within the book to a male author (or at least to a male pseudonym), especially given that the book in which John Foster’s work appears was written by an author with a gender-neutral name (“L.M. Montgomery”)?

The second complication is that, intrigued by Epperly’s discovery about the links between John Foster and these “Woods” articles and unable to shake the nagging feeling that the rest of the text of these four nature essays seemed strangely familiar, I took a closer look at these essays when I prepared them for republication and discovered that Montgomery reused extracts from them in nearly all of her Ontario novels, from The Golden Road (1913) to Anne of Ingleside (1939), making only minor changes. Here is part of page 90 of Volume 1 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader, with part of “The Woods in Winter” with some of the passages underlined.

Image of part of a book page with the following text, some of it underlined in different colours:
their twigs ... are beautiful pagan maidens who have never lost the Eden secret of being naked and unashamed.81
But the conebearers, stanch souls that they are, keep their secrets still. The firs and the pines and the spruces never reveal their mystery, never betray their long-guarded lore.82 See how beautiful is that thickly- growing copse of young firs, lightly powdered with the new-fallen snow, as if a veil of aerial lace had been tricksily flung over austere young druid priestesses forsworn to all such frivolities of vain adornment.83 Yet they wear it gracefully enough ... firs can do anything gracefully, even to wringing their hands in the grip of a storm. The deciduous trees are always anguished and writhen and piteous in storms; but there is something in the conebearers akin to the storm spirit ... something that leaps out to greet it and join with it in a wild, exultant revelry. After the first snowfall, however, the woods are at peace in their white loveliness.84 Today I paused at the entrance of a narrow path between upright ranks of beeches, and looked long adown it before I could commit what seemed the desecration of walking through it ... so taintless and wonderful it seemed, like a street of pearl in the New Jerusalem.85 Every twig and spray was outlined in snow. The undergrowth along its sides was a little fairy forest cut out of marble. The shadows cast by the honey-tinted win- ter sunshine were fine and spirit-like.86 Every step I took revealed new enchantments, as if some ambitious elfin artificer were striving to show just how much could be done with nothing but snow in the hands of somebody who knew how to make use of it. A snowfall such as this is the

The phrase beginning with “beautiful pagan maidens” appears in Rilla of Ingleside; the sentences beginning with “But the conebearers” and “See how beautiful” appear in two different chapters in Emily Climbs; the phrase “at peace in their white loveliness” appears in Mistress Pat, along with the sentences beginning with “Every step I took”; the phrase beginning with “so taintless and wonderful” is in The Golden Road; the sentences beginning with “Every twig and spray” are in The Blue Castle. Not only that, but immediately after the second extract in Emily Climbs, the narrator adds, “Emily decided she would write that sentence down in her Jimmy-book when she went back.” Presumably, Emily, too, would want to use it again.

In my introductory headnote to Montgomery’s four nature essays, which I included in my book under the collective title “[Seasons in the Woods],” I noted that “these borrowings reveal an attempt on [Montgomery’s] part to recapture [when living in Ontario] a delightful ‘spot’ that loved on in her memory.” Since writing those words, I’ve started to look at this a bit differently. Although she expressed ambivalence to her correspondent about the literary quality of these essays, she must have come to see them as authoritative depictions of Prince Edward Island scenery in order to turn to them again and again for several of the nature descriptions that appeared in most of her novels written in Ontario. In other words, these essays acted as a bridge between the Montgomery of Lover’s Lane and the Montgomery of Ontario who never recovered fully from leaving her beloved Cavendish behind.

In other words, Montgomery’s acts of self-repetition don’t need to be understood merely as a busy writer taking shortcuts or being strategic, although certainly that can be part of it too. Perhaps these essays became a form of bibliotherapy for Montgomery as well, as she sought to centre herself in the Cavendish woods that she had renamed Lover’s Lane and that she could access only in written form while writing in Ontario. To my mind, anyway, the complexity here is worth further consideration.

Bibliography

Epperly, Elizabeth Rollins. Through Lover’s Lane: L.M. Montgomery’s Photography and Visual Imagination. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.

Lefebvre, Benjamin. Headnote to “[Seasons in the Woods].” In Lefebvre, The L.M. Montgomery Reader, 1: 73–74.

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

Montgomery, L.M. The Green Gables Letters from L.M. Montgomery to Ephraim Weber, 1905–1909. Edited by Wilfrid Eggleston. Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1960.

—. “[Seasons in the Woods].” In Lefebvre, The L.M. Montgomery Reader, 1: 73–97.

—. “Spring in the Woods.” The Canadian Magazine (Toronto), May 1911, 59–62.

—. “The Woods in Autumn.” The Canadian Magazine (Toronto), October 1911, 574–77.

—. “The Woods in Summer.” The Canadian Magazine (Toronto), September 1911, 399–402.

—. “The Woods in Winter.” The Canadian Magazine (Toronto), December 1911, 162–64.

L.M. Montgomery, Jane Austen, and Self-Repetition

By the strangest of coincidences, a few evenings ago I took a break from writing some contextual material for an item in my next volume of Montgomery’s periodical work, specifically a headnote that mentions that four extracts from Anne’s House of Dreams had appeared in Donald Graham French’s anthology Standard Canadian Reciter: A Book of the Best Readings and Recitations from Canadian Literature, published in 1921 (something I had already mentioned in my overview of Montgomery’s career in my introduction to Volume 1 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader). Donald G. French (1873–1945) was co-author, with J.D. Logan (1869–1929), of Highways of Canadian Literature (1924), the first of six book-length surveys of Canadian literature published in the 1920s. In that volume, which includes a biographical sketch of Montgomery and a summary of her books published up to that point, Logan and French place Anne of Green Gables in a list of Canadian novels “of the Community type,” alongside Marian Keith’s Duncan Polite and Nellie L. McClung’s Sowing Seeds in Danny.

While searching for something else Montgomery-related on the open-access website Early Canadiana Online, I came across for the first time a much earlier article by French—entitled “Canada’s Jane Austen” and appearing in the December 1914 issue of The School, a Toronto publication—from which the bulk of Logan and French’s remarks about Montgomery in Highways would be lifted. The full text of this earlier article is as follows:

No history of English literature is considered complete unless it gives due place to the work done by Jane Austen in her portrayal of rural English domestic life; and no history of Canadian literature, when such comes to be written, should fail to recognize that L.M. Montgomery has done for Canada what Jane Austen did for England.

L.M. Montgomery (now Mrs. (Rev.) Evan [sic] Macdonald) was born at Clifton, Prince Edward Island, and spent her childhood in Cavendish—a seashore farming settlement which figures as “Avonlea” in her stories. Like many another young Canadian she has to the credit of her experiences a few years as teacher in the schools of her province. That her life so far has been spent chiefly within the limits of the little island province and the bounds of an Ontario country parish does not narrow her outlook although it necessarily confines her to themes bounded by rural experiences, for her forte is the portrayal of what she has seen and knows. She has the imaginative and creative gifts, but she uses these in enabling us to see the beauty, the humour, and the pathos that lies about our daily paths.

Anne of Green Gables,” which was Miss Montgomery’s first novel, has an interesting literary history. She tells us that upon being asked for a short serial story for a Sunday school weekly, she cast about for a plot idea. A faded note book entry suggested: “Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for a boy; a girl is sent to them.” The writing of a serial was started, but time did not allow the author to complete it for the purpose intended. As she brooded over the theme it began to expand and the result was a book which may already be confidently labelled a “Canadian Classic.”

In Anne we have an entirely new character in fiction, a high-spirited, sensitive girl, with a wonderfully vivid imagination; wise beyond her years, outspoken and daring; not always good but always lovable. The basis of the story is already explained; its working out is somewhat different from the original suggestion. Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, an elderly bachelor and his sister, living alone on the farm of Green Gables, send a message to an orphan asylum asking that a boy be sent them. Through some mistake a girl comes—the girl Anne. At first Marilla wants to send her back, but sympathy with the child’s longing for a real home, and an interest in her very quaintness, ends in establishing her as a member of the Green Gables family—and then the story has only begun. It is Anne who dominates the whole book. There are other characters, quaint too, and well-drawn, but the introduction of Anne into the community—Anne, so unconventional, so imaginative, and so altogether different from the staid, prosaic, general attitude of the neighbourhood proves to be the introduction of a peculiar ferment, and the incidents which discover to us the process of fermentation are most delightfully odd and mirth-provoking.

In “Anne of Avonlea” we follow the career of our orphan heroine. When we said goodbye to her she was fitting herself to become a teacher and it is with two eventful years of school teaching that this book deals. The writer understands children thoroughly and makes her child characters of all types perfectly natural and life-like. The same creative faculty which gave us in Anne an entirely new shadow-child shows itself in the portrayal of the mischievous but lovable Davy Keith, his demure twin sister Dora, the imaginative Paul Irving, and the many individualities of the pupils of Avonlea School.

Plot interest is not a strong feature of this or of any of L.M. Montgomery’s books. There are, nevertheless, several threads of action which bind together the series of incidents. Her novels are novels of incident rather than of plot; they do not, however, lack in continuity and unity. Frequent passages of nature description reveal at once the author’s intimacy with nature and her poetic attitude of mind.

Here is a typical descriptive passage: “A September day on Prince Edward Island hills; a crisp wind blowing up over the sand dunes from the sea; a long, red road, winding through fields and woods, now looping itself about a corner of thick set spruce, now threading a plantation of young maples with great feathery sheets of ferns beneath them, now dipping down into a hollow where a brook flashed out of the woods and into them again, now basking in the open sunshine between ribbons of goldenrod and of myriads of crickets.”

Chronicles of Avonlea” is a volume of short stories, which contains some of the most finished work of this author. The perfect art that conceals all art is shown in many of these short stories. There is a strong vein of simple humour in this as in all Miss Montgomery’s work; there is also a very keen personal sympathy of the author towards her characters.

Two other books by this author, “The Story Girl” and “The Golden Road,” are written with even less attention to a central plot than either of the two “Anne” books. They are somewhat loosely connected series of incidents in which the same characters take part. But they have none the less a high value when viewed from our standpoint; we are to remember that our Canadian Jane Austen need not invent for us thrilling plots. Other writers can do that, but other writers cannot or at least do not hold before us the mirror of Canadian country life.

Kilmeny of the Orchard” is in a sense but an expanded short story. It is a prose idyll and does not, perhaps, bulk very large when compared with the other books. It is really one of the extended “chronicles” of Avonlea.

In characterizing L.M. Montgomery the Jane Austen of Canada, let it be understood that we are not regardless of the difference in the scope of the work of the two writers. Jane Austen’s canvas is immensely broader, yet L.M. Montgomery’s portrayal of her fellowmen and fellowwomen shows a much keener personal sympathy; her work has more heart to it.

This is not the first time Montgomery had been referred to as the Canadian counterpart to Jane Austen; the earliest instance of this that I’ve found (so far) is a Toronto World review of Chronicles of Avonlea (included in Volume 3 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader) that suggests that “we might perhaps call L.M. Montgomery the Jane Austen of Canadian literature.” And it is also not the first time French would recycle some of his own work. Take a look at an article (signed “D.F.”) entitled “Rilla, Daughter of Anne” that French published in the Toronto Globe in 1921, shortly after the publication of Rilla of Ingleside:

The creation of the character “Anne” was a literary achievement which won enthusiastic commendation from writers of the highest rank—Bliss Carman and Mark Twain. Since then L.M. Montgomery has definitely fixed her place as the Jane Austen of Canadian literature and she has gone on employing her wonderful imaginative and creative gifts in portraying the beauty, the humor and the pathos that lies about our daily paths.

Possessed of a keen personal sympathy, a close intimacy with nature, a poetic attitude of mind, she captivates an ever widening circle of readers with the lightness, spontaneity, quaintness and humor of her stories.

“Rilla of Ingleside,” her latest book, follows up the career of the daughter of “Anne” of “Anne of Green Gables.” Rilla is impetuous, fun-loving, like Anne Shirley, and yet different. Anne herself and the doctor have important parts; Susan, Miss Cornelia and many other old friends reappear.

Canada’s tiny sea-girt Province, Prince Edward Island, was her birthplace. Her childhood was spent at Cavendish—a seashore farming settlement, which forms the background of many of her stories. She attended the country school and Prince of Wales College, Charlottetown, afterwards teaching for three years.

“As far back as my memory runs I was writing stories for my own amusement,” she says. In 1909 [sic], with the publication of her first book, she found the true field for her talents, although she is equally successful as a writer of verse and short stories.

In 1911 she married Rev. Ewan Macdonald, a Presbyterian minister, and came to Ontario to live, her husband’s charge being not far from the city of Toronto.

Although the bulk of this article is original, notice the echo between the 1914 piece (“She has the imaginative and creative gifts, but she uses these in enabling us to see the beauty, the humour, and the pathos that lies about our daily paths”) and the 1921 piece (“she has gone on employing her wonderful imaginative and creative gifts in portraying the beauty, the humor and the pathos that lies about our daily paths”) in addition to the connection in both pieces between Montgomery and Austen.

With only minor changes, the text of the 1914 article would be reused for Logan and French’s Highways ten years later—but without the connection between Montgomery and Austen. Instead, they add a paragraph to discuss the novels that Montgomery had published in the intervening time:

The story of Anne Shirley continues through several volumes—Anne of the Island pictures her college days; Anne’s House of Dreams sees her established as mistress of her own home; while Rilla of Ingleside carries over the history into the second generation, Rilla being the daughter of Anne. There is no new development of method or treatment in these. In Emily of New Moon (1923) Miss Montgomery created a new child character, with a new environment, new conditions, and a new group of minor personages, yet in effect it is of the same type and in the same literary field as her previous novels. The chief difference to be observed is that she employs a more analytic psychological method in depicting her heroine—a method that tends to produce an adult’s story of youth. In a way it marks an advance in literary technique but is not as yet entirely divorced from that minute objective observation which makes equal appeal to the young in years and the young in heart.

Given the amount of repetition between these 1914, 1921, and 1924 pieces on Montgomery by French, how to account for the mysterious disappearance of Austen? Could it be that French’s co-author, J.D. Logan, didn’t share French’s enthusiasm for the literary merit of Montgomery’s work? That seems unlikely, given that, according to Montgomery’s journal entry dated 30 April 1923, Logan had approached her at a recent social function and exclaimed, “Hail, Queen of Canadian Novelists.” Might this be due to a decreased enthusiasm for women’s writing generally? Maybe, yet in Highways Logan and French claim that 1908 marked “the real beginning of the Second Renaissance in Canadian fiction” due to the publication of Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, McClung’s Sowing Seeds in Danny, and Keith’s Duncan Polite (even though Keith’s book had actually appeared in 1905). Might Logan and French have preferred to keep the focus on Canadian authors? Possibly, and yet their discussion of Keith’s novels a few paragraphs later links them to the Thrums books of Scottish author J.M. Barrie, best known as the author of Peter Pan.

So while I can’t guess what’s behind French’s decision (or possibly Logan and French’s decision) to drop the connection between Montgomery and Austen, it’s fortuitous that I came across this instance of repetition when I did. The next phase of my research on Montgomery’s periodical work focuses on periodical short stories in which Montgomery tested out characters, situations, and settings that she would rework—sometimes decades later—in her book-length fiction. Individually, these stories have been referred to as “practice exercises” by Elizabeth Waterston, as “prequels” by Irene Gammel, as “brief periodical warm-ups” by Wendy Roy, as an “early working-out in narrative” by Cecily Devereux, and as “recycled” and “replanted” by Claire E. Campbell. My earlier volumes in The L.M. Montgomery Library highlighted several instances of self-repetition in her non-fiction and her poetry—in A Name for Herself, for instance, I noted that parts of her essay “A Half-Hour in an Old Cemetery” and of her newspaper column “Around the Table” had been woven into Anne of the Island, whereas in my afterword to A World of Songs I noted that the fourteen extracts from the poems Emily shares with Mr. Carpenter in the last chapter of Emily of New Moon had been taken from Montgomery’s own poems. But when it comes to short fiction, the self-repetition becomes more strategic, more nuanced, and more complex. And so, discovering Donald French’s 1914 essay when I did was especially fortuitous, because it reminded me that Montgomery was hardly the only author who repurposed and revised their own work for new audiences, and there are multiple possible reasons for doing so.

Bibliography

Campbell, Claire E. “‘A Window Looking Seaward’: Finding Environmental History in the Writing of L.M. Montgomery.” In The Greater Gulf: Essays on the Environmental History of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, edited by Claire E. Campbell, Edward MacDonald, and Brian Payne, 283–318. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019.

Chronicles of Avonlea.” In The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 3: A Legacy in Review, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre, 115–38. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.

Devereux, Cecily. Headnote to “Our Uncle Wheeler,” by L.M. Montgomery. In Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery, edited by Cecily Devereux, 335. Peterborough: Broadview Editions, 2004.

D.F. [Donald G. French]. “Rilla, Daughter of Anne.” Globe (Toronto), 8 October 1921, 19.

French, Donald G. “Canada’s Jane Austen.” The School (Toronto), December 1914, 268–70. Online at https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.8_06954_28/.

Gammel, Irene. Looking for Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2008.

Lefebvre, Benjamin. Afterword to Montgomery, A World of Songs, 105–20.

—. Introduction to The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 1: A Life in Print, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre, 3–28. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013.

Logan, J.D., and Donald G. French. Highways of Canadian Literature. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1924. Online at https://archive.org/details/highwaysofcanadi0000unse/.

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

—. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume 3: 1921–1929. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992.

—. A World of Songs: Selected Poems, 1894–1921. Edited by Benjamin Lefebvre. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. The L.M. Montgomery Library.

Roy, Wendy. The Next Instalment: Serials, Sequels, and Adaptations of Nellie L. McClung, L.M. Montgomery, and Mazo de la Roche. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2019.

Waterston, Elizabeth. Magic Island: The Fictions of L.M. Montgomery. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Starting Today: The Blue Castle!

Last March, shortly after the start of the COVID-19 restrictions, Andrea McKenzie asked me to collaborate with her on a new initiative designed to help bring L.M. Montgomery’s readers together during this uncertain time. She suggested a Rilla of Ingleside Readathon as a way for us to connect with Montgomery’s worldwide readership through Facebook and as an opportunity for us to revisit some of the contextual work we had put together a decade ago in our restored and annotated edition of the novel, published by Penguin Canada. In a series of Facebook posts, we read the book within the context of Montgomery’s life and times, discussing historical context, gender, nationalism, fashion, technology, allusions to previous works of literature, book covers, translations, and the controversial 1970s abridgement of the text (which, it turns out, happened even earlier than I’d thought!) that continues to be reprinted today.

Andrea and I so enjoyed the opportunity to discuss the novel with so many people around the world that once we were done, we decided to keep the party going, so to speak, and ended up doing the same thing with Jane of Lantern Hill, which we read over the summer. By this point the focus of the group had shifted away from Rilla of Ingleside specifically to more of Montgomery’s work, and so we decided to change the name of the group to the L.M. Montgomery Readathon.

Starting today, we turn to a third Montgomery novel, The Blue Castle, which is a favourite of many Montgomery readers. The only Montgomery book to be set entirely outside Prince Edward Island, The Blue Castle was seen as a major departure for Montgomery when it was first published in 1926. As the Calgary Herald stated in its review of the book, “Admirers of [Anne of Green Gables] have followed [Montgomery] loyally and patiently in the hope that one day she would give them a story which would equal or surpass Anne in theme and reader interest. That day has arrived, and The Blue Castle is the story.” As the New York Times Book Review noted, “although perhaps a little more mature in its spirit than the earlier books,” this book “is unmistakably from first page to last an L.M. Montgomery novel, compact of sentiment, rosily trimmed with romance, peopled with beings drawn solely out of the imagination, but telling a well-made story with humor and pathos.”

The L.M. Montgomery Readathon is open to all readers of L.M. Montgomery’s fiction, including those who are reading The Blue Castle for the first time. Please join us!

L.M. Montgomery Readathon

Cover Reveal: The L.M. Montgomery Reader in Paperback!

Cover art for The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 1: A Life in Print Cover art for The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 2: A Critical Heritage Cover of The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 3: A Legacy in Review

I’m very pleased to announce the forthcoming publication, in paperback, of all three volumes of my award-winning critical anthology, The L.M. Montgomery Reader (Volume 1: A Life in Print; Volume 2: A Critical Heritage; Volume 3: A Legacy in Review) from University of Toronto Press. This project took up the bulk of my professional life over a five-year period, so I’m thrilled that all three volumes will be available in paperback soon.

Once again, the best way to order these books is from the University of Toronto Press website. Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3 are also available in hardcover and ebook formats.

The cover art features the covers of the first Canadian editions of Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, and Chronicles of Avonlea published by the Ryerson Press (Toronto) in 1942 and 1943; these copies are part of my personal collection.

A Rilla of Ingleside Readathon

Recognizing the many ways that L.M. Montgomery’s books have brought people together over time, and mindful that the current global pandemic means we need to be creative about staying in touch with people, Andrea McKenzie and I have started a Rilla of Ingleside readathon on Facebook. Starting Monday, March 30, we will read together three chapters a week from Montgomery’s Great War novel, supplementing our conversation about the text with book covers, reviews, ads, literary allusions, and historical context. Please join us!