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Tag: Rita Bode

L.M. Montgomery at Home in Leaskdale

Benjamin Lefebvre
Photograph of a statue of L.M. Montgomery
Statue of L.M. Montgomery, located on the property of Leaskdale Presbyterian Church.

It’s almost that time of year again! The Lucy Maud Montgomery Society of Ontario will be holding its annual L.M. Montgomery day on Saturday, October 27, 2018. Several presenters will give papers on this year’s theme, L.M. Montgomery at Home in Leaskdale:

“Leaskdale Beginnings and Becomings: L.M. Montgomery and Motherhood” —Rita Bode, Lesley D. Clement, and Margaret Steffler

“‘Pangs and Passions’: L.M. Montgomery’s Reflections on Her Adolescence While Living in Leaskdale” —Melanie J. Fishbane

“The Town of Leaskdale during Montgomery’s Era: 1911 to 1926” —Alan MacGillivray

“Business Woman and Poet: L.M. Montgomery during the Leaskdale Years” —Benjamin Lefebvre

“Growing Independence: L.M. Montgomery in Leaskdale” —Caroline E. Jones

The day will conclude with a book signing featuring me and Melanie J. Fishbane. For more information and to register, see the calendar of events on the LMMSO website. Hope to see you there!

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Three New Books This Month and Three More Coming Soon

Benjamin Lefebvre 2 Comments

Three exciting new L.M. Montgomery-related books have been published throughout the month of May, with three more appearing shortly. Together, these six books showcase the wide reach of Montgomery’s literary and cultural legacy more than seventy-five years after her death.
Cover art for L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature(s)L.M. Montgomery's Complete Journals: The Ontario Years, 1922-1925

Cover art for House of Dreams: The Life of L.M. Montgomery, by Liz RosenbergCover art for The Diary of Charles Macneill, Farmer, 1892–1896Cover art for The Blythes Are Quoted: Penguin Modern Classics Edition
Coming up in June is Liz Rosenberg’s middle-grade biography, House of Dreams: The L.M. Montgomery (Candlewick Press), as well as The Diary of Charles Macneill, Farmer, 1892–1896 (Rock’s Mills Press), the full text of a diary by a distant relative of L.M. Montgomery that she transcribed in full and commented on extensively in her own journal in 1925, with a preface by Jen Rubio. Finally, in early July, Penguin Canada will publish a new Penguin Modern Classics Edition of Montgomery’s rediscovered final book, The Blythes Are Quoted, with a revised introduction by Benjamin Lefebvre and a revised afterword by Elizabeth Rollins Epperly.

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Join Us for The Spirit of Canada (Leaskdale, 20–22 October 2017)

Benjamin Lefebvre

Please join us next month for The Spirit of Canada: Celebrating a Canadian Literary Patriot, L.M. Montgomery, to be held at Leaskdale Manse National Historic Site (home of L.M. Montgomery from 1911 to 1926) on 20–22 October 2017.

Keynote speakers include Elizabeth Rollins Epperly (“Capturing Canada: L.M. Montgomery’s Career of Creating Place”) and Benjamin Lefebvre (“The Upward Climb to Heights Sublime: Private and Public Narratives in L.M. Montgomery’s ‘The Alpine Path'”).

The program also features presentations by Ted Barris, Rita Bode, Lesley D. Clement, Melanie J. Fishbane, Andrea McKenzie, Jen Rubio, Kate Scarth, and Emily Woster.

For more information, including a detailed agenda and a registration form, please visit the website for the Lucy Maud Montgomery Society of Ontario.

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CFP: Writers without Borders (NeMLA panel)

Benjamin Lefebvre

Rita Bode has circulated this call for papers for a conference panel called Writers without Borders: US and Canadian Women Authors, proposed for the next NeMLA conference in Baltimore, Maryland, to be held on 23–26 March 2017. Deadline for submissions is 30 September 2016.

In her study of L.M. Montgomery (1874-1942) in the “Extraordinary Canadians” series, Canadian author Jane Urquhart invokes comparisons of L.M. Montgomery’s life and work to that of her near-contemporary American peers, Edith Wharton (1862-1937), Willa Cather (1873-1947), and Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930), among others.

While the transatlantic connection among women writers is receiving increasing critical attention, the literary relationships among American and Canadian women writers offer a relatively recent area for scholarly explorations of the influences and alignments crossing North America.

This panel seeks comparative studies of American and Canadian women writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that address a range of topics such as the handling of young and/or older female protagonists, representations of nature, depictions of regions, and other relevant subjects. In addition to Montgomery and the authors mentioned above, other possible authors to consider might include Montgomery and other American regionalists, such as Sarah Orne Jewett; Cather and Margaret Laurence; Alcott and her Canadian counterparts.

Please submit 250-300 word abstracts and brief by bio September 30th through the NeMLA submission page: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/16487.

Applicants are not required to be NeMLA members at the time of submission but accepted speakers will have to become members by December 1st, 2016.

For queries, please email Rita Bode at rbode@trentu.ca.

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L.M. Montgomery Day 2015 in Leaskdale

Benjamin Lefebvre

Please join us in Leaskdale, Ontario, on Saturday, 24 October 2015, for the Lucy Maud Montgomery Society of Ontario’s annual L.M. Montgomery Day, which commemorates Montgomery’s arrival in Leaskdale as a minister’s wife in October 1911.

This year’s theme is Maud’s Landscapes: The Effect of Nature on Her Writing, and the schedule of events is as follows:

8:45 a.m.: Coffee and Registration

9:30 a.m.: Melanie Whitfield, President, LMMSO, Welcome; Gwen Layton, LMMSO, “Maud in the Garden: L.M. Montgomery’s Sense of Place in Her Leaskdale Literary Landscape”

10:00 a.m.: Melanie Fishbane, “Fairy Slopes and Phantom Shadows: L.M. Montgomery as Teen Poet”

10:35 a.m.: Vanessa Brown, “Hester Gray’s Garden”

11:10 a.m.: Break

11:25 a.m.: Benjamin Lefebvre, “In Lands Afar: L.M. Montgomery and the Re-creation of Prince Edward Island in Ontario”

12:00 p.m.: Lunch

1:00 p.m.: Kate Macdonald Butler, “Reflections on Filming Anne of Green Gables in 2015”

1:30 p.m.: Launch of L.M. Montgomery’s Rainbow Valleys: The Ontario Years, 1911–1942, including remarks by editors Rita Bode and Lesley D. Clement

3:00 p.m.: Book signing and refreshments

4:00 p.m.: Walk to Rainbow Valley and Tour of the Leaskdale Manse

To obtain more information and to register, please visit the website for the Lucy Maud Montgomery Society of Ontario.

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Announcing the publication of L.M. Montgomery’s Rainbow Valleys: The Ontario Years, 1911–1942

Benjamin Lefebvre

L.M. Montgomery's Rainbow ValleysCongratulations to Rita Bode and Lesley D. Clement on their new collection of essays, L.M. Montgomery’s Rainbow Valleys: The Ontario Years, 1911–1942, which has just been published by McGill-Queen’s University Press! The volume consists of fourteen chapters of original scholarship by Kate Macdonald Butler, Mary Beth Cavert, Lesley D. Clement, Melanie J. Fishbane, Natalie Forest, Caroline E. Jones, E. Holly Pike, Laura M. Robinson, Linda Rodenburg, Margaret Steffler, Kate Sutherland, William V. Thompson, Elizabeth Waterston, and Emily Woster, as well as an interlude by Katherine Cameron, an introduction by the volume editors, and an appendix by the volume editors with assistance from Kristina Eldridge and Chloe Verner.

“With its interest in placing Montgomery’s work in new cultural and historical contexts, L.M. Montgomery’s Rainbow Valleys expands our understanding of this canonical Canadian author. Although there is no disputing that PEI had an enduring impact on Montgomery’s literary sensibility, Ontario played its part too, as the essays in this collection abundantly reveal.” –Janice Fiamengo, University of Ottawa

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Announcing L.M. Montgomery’s Rainbow Valleys

Benjamin Lefebvre

L.M. Montgomery's Rainbow ValleysAnnouncing L.M. Montgomery’s Rainbow Valleys: The Ontario Years, 1911–1942, a collection of essays edited by Rita Bode and Lesley D. Clement, to be published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in October 2015!

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) and Anne of Green Gables will always be associated with Prince Edward Island, Montgomery’s childhood home and the setting of her most famous novels. Yet, after marrying Rev. Ewan Macdonald in 1911, she lived in Ontario for three decades. There she became a mother of two sons, fulfilled the duties of a minister’s wife, advocated for copyright protection and recognition of Canadian literature, wrote prolifically, and reached a global readership that has never waned.

Engaging with discussions on both her life and her fiction, L.M. Montgomery’s Rainbow Valleys explores the joys, sorrows, and literature that emerged from her transformative years in Ontario. While this time brought Montgomery much pleasure and acclaim, it was also challenged and complicated by a sense of displacement and the need to self-fashion and self-dramatize as she struggled to align her private self with her public persona. Written by scholars from various fields and including a contribution by Montgomery’s granddaughter, this volume covers topics such as war, religion, women’s lives, friendships, loss, and grief, focusing on a range of related themes to explore Montgomery’s varied states of mind.

An in-depth study of one of Canada’s most internationally acclaimed authors, L.M. Montgomery’s Rainbow Valleys shows how she recreated herself as an Ontario writer and adapted to the rapidly changing world of the twentieth century.

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CFP: L.M. Montgomery: The Ontario Years (1911–1942)

Benjamin Lefebvre

For thirty years, L.M. Montgomery lived in Ontario, writing fiction that confirmed her place, established by the early Anne novels, in the Canadian canon. While much has been written on the familial, cultural, historical, and geographical associations of and influences on her writings of her early years in Prince Edward Island, there is much left to be explored of similar associations and influences from the years Montgomery lived in Leaskdale, Norval, and Toronto and vacationed in Bala. The 2011 centennial celebration, hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Society of Ontario last October, began this conversation in a more formal capacity than had previously occurred. This call-for-papers is for a collection of essays that would not only continue the conversations sparked during this celebration but also open up new dialogues. The editors are particularly interested in discussions of literary influences, specific intellectual interests, events, people, and locales pertaining to Ontario and/or the years 1911–42 that contributed to Montgomery’s fictional and life writing and her photography. If you would like to contribute to this publication, please submit an abstract (c500 words) of your proposed paper and a curriculum vitae (no more than two pages) by Friday, 31 August 2012 to Rita Bode (rbode[at]trentu[dot]ca) and Lesley Clement (lclement[at]lakeheadu[dot]ca). We will contact you about the status of your proposal by the end of October, 2012, at which stage we will be approaching university presses that have a special interest in Canadian literature and culture. If the editors invite you to submit a paper, it should be 18-22 double-spaced pages (including endnotes and bibliography) and would be due the end of February, 2013. Please address any queries to above editors.

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NeMLA Panel on “Beyond Green Gables”

Benjamin Lefebvre

The following panel, “Beyond Green Gables” (chaired by Rita Bode, Trent University), will take place at the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) conference in Boston on 27 February 2009. It includes the following panelists:

  • Kate Scarth, Memorial University, “Taking the Country to the City: Redefining ‘Home’ in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of the Island“
  • Christiana R. Salah, University of Connecticut, “Bonds of Sea and Land: The Prehensile Places of L.M. Montgomery’s Fiction”
  • Trisha Tucker, University of Southern California, “L. M. Montgomery and the Curious Child”
  • Anne Ramirez, Neumann College, “Anne Shirley and Ellen Montgomery: Imagining a Wider World”
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Chronicles of My Inbox

Benjamin Lefebvre

Today I received notices of three separate L.M. Montgomery events and exhibits and a video.

From Mary Beth Cavert (Minnesota): A link to a page devoted to details and photos of the L.M. Montgomery Literary Society’s first Anne event;

From Rita Bode (Trent University): A notice that Robarts Library of the University of Toronto has launched its own exhibit titled “Picture of Green Gables Farm,” which runs from 21 April to 21 May 2008 on the first floor of the Robarts Library. Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables, the collection includes a number of editions, translations, adaptations, other books by the author, and items related to Prince Edward Island.

From Helen Salmon (University of Guelph library): Between 23 and 26 October 2008, the University of Guelph will host “The Cultural Influence of Lucy Maud Montgomery,” a symposium that will focus on Guelph’s extensive archival collection of Montgomery materials:

The university has undertaken an extensive digitization project to make its extensive collection of Montgomery memorabilia—including her private journals, scrapbooks, handiwork, photographs, and other records—more accessible to Montgomery scholars and fans everywhere. The symposium will offer the very first opportunity to explore the newly launched collections website, examine the archival collections first-hand, view an L.M. Montgomery exhibit at the University’s art gallery, and listen to speakers who will explore her impact on readers, writers, and women in the 20th century. Join with Canada’s foremost Montgomery scholars, biographers, enthusiasts, and fans to recognize her world-wide legacy and explore the mystery of her creativity. This four day weekend event will include coach tours to view several of L.M. Montgomery’s residences in Ontario, the opening of an art exhibit,  film viewings, panel discussions, and scholarly presentations which will highlight author’s contributions to literary and popular culture.

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