Rainbow Valley, L.M. Montgomery’s tenth book, was published in August 1919 by McClelland & Stewart and Frederick A. Stokes Company.
« Anne’s House of Dreams (1917) | Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920) »
Contents
About Rainbow Valley
Epigraph
Dedication
Chapters
Editions of Rainbow Valley
Reviews of Rainbow Valley
Related page: Reviews of Books by L.M. Montgomery: 1908–1921
About Rainbow Valley
Rainbow Valley is the sixth of eleven books to feature Montgomery’s protagonist Anne Shirley Blythe, preceded by Anne of Green Gables (1908), Anne of Avonlea (1909), Chronicles of Avonlea (1912), Anne of the Island (1915), and Anne’s House of Dreams (1917), and followed by Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920), Rilla of Ingleside (1921), Anne of Windy Poplars (1936), Anne of Ingleside (1939), and The Blythes Are Quoted (2009).
Although the novel is set in the first decade of the twentieth century, Montgomery planned and drafted most of it in the midst of the First World War, and it appeared within a year of the war’s end. The shadow of the war looms over the adult and child characters in the book, which is dedicated to the memory of three young men in Montgomery’s community who died in battle.
Epigraph
“The thoughts of youth are long,
long thoughts.”
—Longfellow
Dedication
To
the memory of
Goldwin Lapp, Robert Brookes
and Morley Shier
who made the supreme sacrifice
that the happy valleys of their home land
might be kept sacred from
the ravage of the invader
Chapters
I. Home Again
II. Sheer Gossip
III. The Ingleside Children
IV. The Manse Children
V. The Advent of Mary Vance
VI. Mary Stays at the Manse
VII. A Fishy Episode
VIII. Miss Cornelia Intervenes
IX. Una Intervenes
X. The Manse Girls Clean House
XI. A Dreadful Discovery
XII. An Explanation and a Dare
XIII. The House on the Hill
XIV. Mrs. Alec Davis Makes a Call
XV. More Gossip
XVI. Tit for Tat
XVII. A Double Victory
XVIII. Mary Brings Evil Tidings
XIX. Poor Adam!
XX. Faith Makes a Friend
XXI. The Impossible Word
XXII. St. George Knows All About It
XXIII. The Good-Conduct Club
XXIV. A Charitable Impulse
XXV. Another Scandal and Another “Explanation”
XXVI. Miss Cornelia Gets a New Point of View
XXVII. A Sacred Concert
XXVIII. A Fast Day
XXIX. A Weird Tale
XXX. The Ghost on the Dyke
XXXI. Carl Does Penance
XXXII. Two Stubborn People
XXXIII. Carl Is—Not—Whipped
XXXIV. Una Visits the Hill
XXXV. “Let the Piper Come”
Editions of Rainbow Valley
McClelland and Stewart (Toronto) published the first Canadian edition of Rainbow Valley in 1919, with cover art and a full-colour frontispiece illustration by M.L. Kirk. Some later printings of the McClelland and Stewart edition include an erroneous copyright date of 1923. Later McClelland and Stewart editions included a Cavendish Library edition in 1947, a Canadian Favourites edition in 1973, and a new edition in 1990.
Frederick A. Stokes Company (New York) published the first U.S. edition of Rainbow Valley in 1919. It is identical to the first Canadian edition. Stokes licensed reprint editions to A.L. Burt Company (New York) and Grosset and Dunlap (New York).
Constable and Company (London) published the first UK edition of Rainbow Valley in 1920. George G. Harrap and Company (London) released a new edition in 1926.
Angus and Robertson (Sydney) published the first Australian edition of Rainbow Valley in 1925, through its Cornstalk Publishing Company imprint. It published subsequent editions throughout the twentieth century.
Reviews of Rainbow Valley
Reviews of Rainbow Valley that have been located so far appeared in periodicals from Australia, Canada, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Volume 3 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader includes the full text of twenty-four reviews of Rainbow Valley.
“Every novelist knows how difficult it is to make children stand out as human individuals, but in these three hundred pages or so Miss Montgomery does this for ten or a dozen of the most lovable and scandalous youngsters who ever got together in one volume. They elbow into the background a bunch of adults who would be interesting enough if the youngsters were not so much more so; and they leave us with a determination to get a sequel out of their author by hook or by crook, so that we may find out what becomes of them after they grow up and the Great War has come to darken their young lives.”
—The Canadian Bookman (Ste. Anne de Bellevue, QC)