Rilla of Ingleside, L.M. Montgomery’s twelfth book, was published in September 1921 by McClelland & Stewart and Frederick A. Stokes Company.
« Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920) | Emily of New Moon (1923) »
Contents
About Rilla of Ingleside
Epigraph
Dedication
Chapters
Editions of Rilla of Ingleside
Reviews of Rilla of Ingleside
Related page: Reviews of Books by L.M. Montgomery: 1908–1921
About Rilla of Ingleside
Rilla of Ingleside is the eighth 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), Anne’s House of Dreams (1917), Rainbow Valley (1919), and Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920) and followed by Anne of Windy Poplars (1936), Anne of Ingleside (1939), and The Blythes Are Quoted (2009).
Rilla of Ingleside is one of the only contemporary fictional accounts of the experiences of women and young people at the Canadian home front during the First World War. Montgomery began writing the book within months of the war’s end in November 1918 and the death of her first cousin and closest friend, Frederica Campbell McFarlane, to whose memory the book is dedicated. It reflects the conviction felt by Montgomery and many of her contemporaries that a new, utopian world would emerge out of the ashes of war—a sentiment she would later revisit.
Montgomery vowed after completing Rilla of Ingleside that this would be the last of the Anne books, but fifteen years later, partly due to the financial success of the 1934 film based on Anne of Green Gables, she wrote three more books to fill in gaps in the overall chronology: Anne of Windy Poplars (1936), Anne of Ingleside (1939), and The Blythes Are Quoted (2009).
A later reprint of Rilla of Ingleside silently abridged the text by 4,500 words. Most reprint editions since the 1970s contain this shortened text.
Epigraph
“Now they remain to us forever young
Who with such splendour gave their
youth away.”
—Sheard
Dedication
To
the memory of
Frederica Campbell Macfarlane
who went away from me when the dawn broke
on January 25th, 1919—a true friend, a rare
personality, a loyal and courageous soul.
Chapters
I. Glen “Notes” and Other Matters
II. Dew of Morning
III. Moonlit Mirth
IV. The Piper Pipes
V. “The Sound of a Going”
VI. Susan, Rilla, and Dog Monday Make a Resolution
VII. A War Baby and a Soup Tureen
VIII. Rilla Decides
IX. Doc Has a Misadventure
X. The Troubles of Rilla
XI. Dark and Bright
XII. In the Days of Langemarck
XIII. A Slice of Humble Pie
XIV. The Valley of Decision
XV. Until the Day Break
XVI. Realism and Romance
XVII. The Weeks Wear By
XVIII. A War Wedding
XIX. “They Shall Not Pass”
XX. Norman Douglas Speaks Out in Meeting
XXI. “Love Affairs Are Horrible”
XXII. Little Dog Monday Knows
XXIII. “And So, Goodnight”
XXIV. Mary Is Just in Time
XXV. Shirley Goes
XXVI. Susan Has a Proposal of Marriage
XXVII. Waiting
XXVIII. Black Sunday
XXIX. “Wounded and Missing”
XXX. The Turning of the Tide
XXXI. Mrs. Matilda Pitman
XXXII. Word from Jem
XXXIII. Victory!!
XXXIV. Mr. Hyde Goes to His Own Place and Susan Takes a Honeymoon
XXXV. “Rilla-My-Rilla!”
Editions of Rilla of Ingleside
McClelland and Stewart (Toronto) published the first Canadian edition of Rilla of Ingleside in 1921, 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 1920. 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 Rilla of Ingleside in 1921. 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).
Hodder and Stoughton (London) published the first UK edition of Rilla of Ingleside in 1921. George G. Harrap and Company (London) published a new edition of Rilla of Ingleside in 1928.
Angus and Robertson (Sydney) published the first Australian edition of Rilla of Ingleside in 1928, through its Cornstalk Publishing Company imprint. It published subsequent editions of Rilla of Ingleside throughout the twentieth century.
Viking Canada (Toronto) published a restored and annotated edition of Rilla of Ingleside, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre and Andrea McKenzie, in 2010.
Rock’s Mills Press (Oakville, ON) published a critical edition of Rilla of Ingleside, edited by Jen Rubio, in 2015, followed by a manuscript edition entitled Readying Rilla: L.M. Montgomery’s Reworking of “Rilla of Ingleside,” edited by Elizabeth Waterston and Kate Waterston, in 2016.
Reviews of Rilla of Ingleside
Reviews of Rilla of Ingleside that have been located so far appeared in periodicals from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Volume 3 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader includes the full text of twenty-five reviews of Rilla of Ingleside.
“As a record of the war years, as seen from Glen St. Mary, the author has presented a faithful and worthy picture, spiced by realistic conversation and records of sentiment, and often illuminated by poetic touches in describing the charm of life in that island garden.”
—The Globe (Toronto)
“A hundred years hence, Rilla of Ingleside will be useful to historians for a picture of Canadian home life during the Great War. Every great event of the conflict is traced with its effects on Ingleside, and Walter, the shy, sensitive boy, the poet of the family, takes his leave—but, why spoil the story?”
—Manitoba Free Press (Winnipeg)