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Category: Cover Art

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.

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.

Cover Art for First Two Titles in the L.M. Montgomery Library

Cover art for A NAME FOR HERSELF: SELECTED WRITINGS, 1891–1917, by L.M. Montgomery, edited by Benjamin LefebvreCover art for A WORLD OF SONGS: SELECTED POEMS, 1894–1921, by L.M. Montgomery, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre

I’m happy to share with you the cover art for the first two volumes in The L.M. Montgomery Library. The first volume, A Name for Herself: Selected Writings, 1891–1917, is now up for pre-order on the publisher’s website, where there’s also now a dedicated page for the series, or through your favourite bookseller; it will be released later this fall. The second volume, A World of Songs: Selected Poems, 1894–1921, will be available in February 2019.

Be sure to subscribe to this blog for future updates on these volumes, including sneak previews, full tables of contents, and notices about book signings and readings!

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Cover Art for House of Dreams: The Life of L.M. Montgomery

Given that today is the anniversary of L.M. Montgomery’s birth in 1874, it seems fitting to post that Candlewick Press has released on its website a tentative cover for its upcoming middle-grade biography, Liz Rosenberg’s House of Dreams: The Life of L.M. Montgomery, illustrated by Julie Morstad and scheduled for publication in June 2018.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Maud who adored stories. When she was fourteen years old, Maud wrote in her journal, “I love books. I hope when I grow up to be able to have lots of them.” Not only did Maud grow up to own lots of books, she wrote twenty-four of them herself as L. M. Montgomery, the world-renowned author of Anne of Green Gables. For many years, not a great deal was known about Maud’s personal life. Her childhood was spent with strict, undemonstrative grandparents, and her reflections on writing, her lifelong struggles with anxiety and depression, her “year of mad passion,” and her difficult married life remained locked away, buried deep within her unpublished personal journals. Through this revealing and deeply moving biography, kindred spirits of all ages who, like Maud, never gave up “the substance of things hoped for” will be captivated anew by the words of this remarkable woman.

An affecting biography of the author of Anne of Green Gables is the first for young readers to include revelations about her last days and to encompass the complexity of a brilliant and sometimes troubled life.

Cover art for House of Dreams: The Life of L.M. Montgomery, by Liz Rosenberg

The Blythes Are Quoted: New Cover Art!

At some point in the months leading to the publication of the first edition of L.M. Montgomery’s rediscovered final book, The Blythes Are Quoted in October 2009, my colleagues at Penguin Canada presented me with the cover of the hardcover edition, which looked like this:

The Blythes Are Quoted (Viking Canada, 2009)

They had designed it to be similar to Budge Wilson’s prequel, Before Green Gables, which they had published in hardcover in February 2008 along with a “100 Years of Anne” hardcover edition of Anne of Green Gables that duplicated the original 1908 cover, like this:

A year later, after the hardcover edition of Blythes did so well, Penguin Canada published a paperback edition of the book, like this:

The paperback edition appeared in November 2010 alongside a restored edition of Montgomery’s First World War novel, Rilla of Ingleside, which I edited in collaboration with Andrea McKenzie and which also was rereleased in paperback a year later, like this:

Rilla of Ingleside (Viking Canada, 2010)

Meanwhile, I was thrilled when news came that Blythes would appear in Finnish and in Polish, the former as Annan jäähyväiset [Anne’s Farewell], translated by Marja Helanen-Ahtola (Helsinki: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, September 2010), the latter as Ania z Wyspy Ksiecia Edwarda [Anne of Prince Edward Island], translated by Pawel Ciemniewski (Krókow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, May 2011), like this:

Annan Jäähyväiset (WSOY, 2010)Ania z Wyspy Ksiecia Edwarda

And I was especially pleased when I learned that it would be published in Japanese as well, but because of the length of the book it would be split into two volumes, as An no Omoide no Hibi [Anne’s Days of Remembrance, translated by Mie Muraoka (Tokyo: Shinchosha, October 2012), like this:

In the time since then, I moved on to other projects, but I still hoped there would be an opportunity later on to do a new edition of The Blythes Are Quoted. That opportunity came this past spring when I learned that the book would be included in a revamped Penguin Canada Modern Classics set of Canadian literature reprints. This edition will now be available in January 2018, and I’m so pleased finally to be able to share the new cover art:

What’s next for The Blythes Are Quoted? Well, I’m planning some events in the first half of 2018, and hopefully, there will be new editions in English outside Canada and further translations in the years to come. In the meantime, please join us on the book’s official Facebook page for the latest discussion!

Cover Art for Four More Anne Reissues by Virago Modern Classics

Virago Press has just released the covers of four more Anne reissues that it will be publishing as part of its Virago Modern Classics imprint later this year: Anne of Windy Willows (published as Anne of Windy Poplars in North America), Anne’s House of Dreams, Anne of Ingleside, and Rainbow Valley. As I mentioned in January when I posted the covers of the previous Virago editions, the artwork for all these editions is by UK-based artist Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini.

Cover art for Anne of Windy Willows (Virago Press, 2017) Cover art for Anne's House of Dreams (Virago Press, 2017) Cover art for Anne of Ingleside (Virago Press, 2017) Cover art for Rainbow Valley (Virago Press, 2017)

These editions will be released in spring 2017 in the United Kingdom and in fall 2017 in North America.

Cover Art for Three Anne Reissues from Virago Modern Classics

Virago Press, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group (London), has released the covers of its reissues of Anne of Green GablesAnne of Avonlea, and Anne of the Island, scheduled for publication in March 2017 as part of the Virago Modern Classics series!

Anne of Green Gables (Virago Press, 2017) Anne of Avonlea (Virago Press, 2017) Anne of the Island (Virago Press, 2017)

These will be followed by reissues of Anne of Windy Willows (the UK version of Anne of Windy Poplars), Anne’s House of DreamsAnne of Ingleside, and Rainbow Valley later in spring 2017.

A number of Montgomery books have appeared within this imprint already: Emily of New MoonEmily Climbs, and Emily’s Quest in 2013, followed by Rilla of Ingleside and Jane of Lantern Hill in 2014. UK-based artist Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini contributed the artwork for all these titles.

Emily of New Moon (Virago Press, 2013) Emily Climbs (Virago Press, 2013) Emily's Quest (Virago Press, 2013) Rilla of Ingleside (Virago Press, 2014) Jane of Lantern Hill (Virago Press, 2014)

L.M. Montgomery Reader Cover Montage

My friend Melanie Fishbane, upon receiving her copy of The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 3: A Legacy in Review last week, took a couple of photos of the three volumes on her shelf, edited them through some sort of Photoshop/Instagram rinse, and then posted them on Facebook. The arrangement looked so neat that I asked her permission to repost it, which she graciously gave. Thanks, Mel!

Montage of covers of /The L.M. Montgomery Reader/

The “Buxom Blonde” Controversy of 2013

Guest post by Melanie Fishbane

“Yes, it’s red,” she said resignedly. “Now you see why I can’t be perfectly happy. Nobody could who had red hair. . . . I cannot imagine that red hair away. . . . It will be my lifelong sorrow.”

Well, even if Anne had been happier as a “buxom blonde,” it seems that her fans have a definite opinion about her lifelong sorrow.

When Josie Leavitt’s piece on how the cover on a recent Anne of Green Gables e-book collection could ruin a book went viral, it caused an international reaction that was so intense that it might have had Anne rethink her stand on red hair. The new edition, released in November under Amazon’s CreateSpace self-publishing operation, featured a blonde woman probably in her early 20s, dressed like a farm girl out of a 1980s jeans ad, and leaning over provocatively.

CBC Radio was one of the first to pick up the story on their show “As it Happens,” which aired on the 6 February, and featured Mary Beth Cavert, who had some interesting things to say about how Montgomery felt about the cover. I loved it when she joked about meeting Gilbert behind the hay stacks and if Montgomery had had an iPhone she would have “pitched it.”

After that everything from the local newspaper to the evening news, you couldn’t escape this story. Even This Hour Has 22 Minutes (a satirical news hour program on CBC) wrote a hilarious sketch that led to some troubling hair dye issues. It even drowned out another amusing anecdotal story on Boing Boing that suggested that a middle-aged Anne of Ingleside had herpes. (A week later CBC tried to rekindle the flame, but it seems that being blonde was more controversial than having an STD.)

Interestingly, this cover is just one of many odd Anne covers surfacing online through digital channels. Many of Montgomery’s books are now in the public domain so any e-book publisher can slap on a cover and use it. I suspect that CreateSpace didn’t make a conscious decision about what cover to use, but was most likely blind merchandising without awareness of what kind of kerfuffle it could create. Perhaps it just so happened that the blonde beat out the three-year-old in the red-poppied garden because it just made a better news story.

At the last Montgomery conference, L.M. Montgomery and Cultural Memory, there was a lot of discussion around how Montgomery and Anne are remembered as part of our cultural Canadian consciousness. And while some articles, such as The Toronto Star, used a stock photo from Kevin Sullivan’s version of Anne played by Megan Follows as a way to compare our collectively approved version of Anne to the blasphemous one, what seems clear is that the public has a very specific idea of who Anne Shirley is and woe betide anyone that re-imagines her otherwise.

The public wants the image of a red-headed dreamy and deviant orphan girl looking out to the precipices of what will be, because that is the Anne people remember from their childhood. And memory is more precious than e-book sales.

Cover Art for Urquhart Biography of Montgomery

Cover art for Jane Urquhart's biography /L.M. Montgomery/, published as part of the Extraordinary Canadians series by Penguin Canada.
Cover art for Jane Urquhart’s biography /L.M. Montgomery/, published as part of the Extraordinary Canadians series by Penguin Canada.

Jane Urquhart’s forthcoming biography of L.M. Montgomery, part of the Extraordinary Canadians series by Penguin Canada, is now available for pre-order at Amazon.ca and at Chapters.Indigo.ca. It is scheduled for publication on 22 September 2009.

Cover art for Irene Gammel’s Looking for Anne

We are pleased to present for the first time the cover for Irene Gammel’s upcoming book, Looking for Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic, to be published in March 2008 by Key Porter Books (Canada) and St. Martin’s Press (USA). More information about this book will be posted here closer to the publication date.