I’m thrilled to announce the forthcoming publication of my next book, Becoming L.M. Montgomery, by University of Toronto Press in September 2018! This book has been several years in the making and has involved extensive research in archives and rare periodicals, including three trips to Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. It is the first of several volumes to gather Montgomery’s extensive periodical publications and make them available to twenty-first-century readers. So looking forward to sharing this new material with L.M. Montgomery’s readers!
Years before she published her internationally celebrated first novel, Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery started contributing short works to periodicals across North America. While these works consisted primarily of poems and short stories, she also experimented with a wider range of forms, particularly during the early years of her career, at which point she experimented with several authorial identities before settling on the professional moniker “L.M. Montgomery.”
In Becoming L.M. Montgomery, leading Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre collects the majority of these so-called “miscellaneous” pieces and discusses them in relation to the English-speaking women writers who preceded her and the strategies they used to succeed, including the decision to publish under a gender-neutral signature. Among the highlights of the volume are Montgomery’s contributions to student periodicals, a weekly newspaper column entitled “Around the Table,” a long-lost story narrated first by a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage and then by the man she wishes she had married instead, as well as a new edition of her 1917 celebrity memoir, “The Alpine Path.” Drawing fascinating links to Montgomery’s life writing, career, and fiction, this volume will offer scholars and readers alike an intriguing new look at the work of Canada’s most enduringly popular author.
UPDATED 12 JUNE 2018: This new book will now appear as the first volume in The L.M. Montgomery Library under the title A Name for Herself: Selected Writings, 1891–1917, coming in September 2018!
Congratulations! I am looking forward to reading it.
Thanks, Laurie! I hope you’ll like it. (Montgomery’s newspaper column is a hoot!)
When and where can I pre-order? Can’t wait!
It will be available for pre-order through most book vendors in the months to come. I’ll post the information once it’s available.
So looking forward to another of your books. They are always filled with information I want to know.
Thanks, Lynda! I hope you like this one. Montgomery’s newspaper column makes for fascinating reading—very different from anything else she wrote.
I have a set of newspaper articles, (copies) called “Around the Table” by Cynthia. Are these the ones you are mentioning?
Yes, it’s those. Where did your copies come from, Lynda? I had a hard time tracking down the newspaper in which they were published!
My pen pal from Alberta, had a pen pal in Halifax, who photo copied them for us. They are quite poor copies but I could figure out most of the words. Did you find originals? Where?
Lynda
To the best of my knowledge, there’s only one surviving copy of the microfilm reel for the Halifax Daily Echo, and it’s at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. Montgomery pasted clippings of the columns in one of her scrapbooks (some out of order, one missing altogether), arranged to look like one continuous column, with no dates. This volume will have the full text of all thirty-five instalments, with annotations.
Thanks. I will get rid of my poor copies, as soon as I purchase your book.
Great! I do look forward to hearing how you like the book once it’s out, Lynda.