Viking Canada (Toronto), now an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada, released two L.M. Montgomery editions between 2009 and 2010. All editions are signed “L.M. Montgomery” unless stated otherwise.
Contents
The Blythes Are Quoted (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2009)
Rilla of Ingleside (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2010)
The Blythes Are Quoted (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2009)
Edited by Benjamin Lefebvre.
Foreword by Elizabeth Rollins Epperly (ix–xiv). Afterword (511–20), “A Note on the Text” (521–22), acknowledgments (523) by Benjamin Lefebvre. “Books by L.M. Montgomery” (525–27).
Jacketed hardcover. 7.75” x 5”. xiv, 527 pp. ISBN 9780670063918. CAN$25.00. Cover art by Shelagh Armstrong.
“The rediscovered last work of L.M. Montgomery.”
Followed by a trade paperback edition by Penguin Canada in 2010 and by a Penguin Modern Classics Edition in 2018.
Synopsis
Adultery, illegitimacy, revenge, murder, and death—these are not the first terms we associate with L.M. Montgomery. But in The Blythes Are Quoted, completed at the end of her life, the author brings topics such as these to the fore.
Intended by Montgomery to be the ninth volume in her bestselling series featuring Anne Shirley Blythe, The Blythes Are Quoted takes Anne and her family a full two decades beyond anything else she published about them, and some of its subject matter is darker than we might expect.
Divided into two sections, one set before and one after the Great War of 1914–1918, it contains fifteen short stories set in and around the Blythes’ Prince Edward Island community of Glen St. Mary. Binding these stories are sketches featuring Anne and Gilbert Blythe discussing poems by Anne and their middle son, Walter, who dies as a soldier in the war. By blending together poetry, prose, and dialogue in this way, Montgomery was at the end of her career experimenting with storytelling methods in an entirely new manner.
This publication of Montgomery’s rediscovered original work—previously published only in severely abridged form as The Road to Yesterday—invites readers to return to her earlier books with a renewed appreciation and perspective.
Rilla of Ingleside (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2010)
Edited by Benjamin Lefebvre and Andrea McKenzie.
Introduction (ix–xix), “A Note on the Text” (xx), “The Origins of the First World War” (xxi–xxv), “Canadian Women’s Poetry of the First World War” (351–53), glossary (354–87), and “Further Reading” (388–89) by Benjamin Lefebvre and Andrea McKenzie. “Our Women” by L.M. Montgomery (352). “The Young Knights” by Virna Sheard (352–53).
Jacketed hardcover. 5 1/8” × 7 3/4”. xxv, 390 pp. ISBN 9780670065196. Cover illustration by Vince McIndoe. CAN$26.00. Epigraph and dedication included.
This edition restores the complete text of the original 1921 edition. It supplements that text with an introduction, maps of Europe, two poems, and a detailed glossary, to help place Montgomery’s text within its historical, cultural, and biographical contexts. An identical trade paperback edition by Penguin Canada followed in 2011.
Copies of the first printing of both the hardcover and the paperback editions are in the site owner’s personal collection. Cover art courtesy of Penguin Canada.
From the Back Cover
“In my latest story, ‘Rilla of Ingleside,’ I have tried, as far as in me lies, to depict the fine and splendid way in which the girls of Canada reacted to the Great War—their bravery, patience and self-sacrifice. The book is theirs in a sense in which none of my other books have been: for my other books were written for anyone who might like to read them: but ‘Rilla’ was written for the girls of the great young land I love, whose destiny it will be their duty and privilege to shape and share.”
—L.M. Montgomery, from “How I Became a Writer,” 1921
Synopsis
First published in 1921, Rilla of Ingleside—originally written as the final sequel to Anne of Green Gables—is one of the only contemporary depictions in Canadian fiction of women on the home front during the First World War. Focusing on Rilla Blythe, the pretty and high-spirited youngest daughter of Anne Shirley, the novel paints a vivid and compelling picture of the women who battled to keep the home fires burning throughout those tumultuous years. Using her own wartime experience and imagination, Montgomery recreates the laughter and grief, poignancy and suspense, struggles and courage of Canadian women at war.
This special gift edition includes Montgomery’s complete, restored, and unabridged original text as well as a thoughtful introduction from the editors, a detailed glossary, maps of Europe during the war, and war poems by L.M. Montgomery and her contemporary Virna Sheard.