Five reviews of L.M. Montgomery’s books are fascinating for the assumptions they reveal about place, good writing, and readers.
Contents
Preamble
Farmers’ Magazine Reviews Rainbow Valley
The Christian Endeavor World Reviews Rainbow Valley
The Christian Endeavor World Reviews Further Chronicles of Avonlea
Springfield Union Reviews Rilla of Ingleside
The Christian Endeavor World Reviews Rilla of Ingleside
Bibliography
Image Credit
Preamble
One of my previous books, The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 3: A Legacy in Review, contains the full text of almost 400 reviews of the twenty-four books Montgomery published within her lifetime, excerpts from dozens more, and a narrative overview of reviews of an additional twenty-four books attributed to Montgomery and published between 1960 and 2013. Although I blogged quite a bit about reviews around the time I was putting this book together, once it was published in 2015 I was ready to move on to something else. Not surprisingly given that I’ve continued to comb through newspapers and magazines looking for Montgomery’s short stories, poems, and miscellaneous pieces since then, I do come across new book reviews periodically. Normally when that happens I just update my master list and file them away on my hard drive, but this week I decided to post some reviews I’ve come across recently because one of them echoes something I wrote recently about Montgomery and Jane Austen.
Here are five reviews of three books that Montgomery published at the height of her career—or, strictly speaking, of two books that Montgomery published at the height of her career (Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingleside) and of one book that her unscrupulous first publisher manipulated her into publishing around this time (Further Chronicles of Avonlea).
Like all reviews of Montgomery’s books, these five are fascinating in terms of what elements they praise and what assumptions they reveal about place and readerships.
Farmers’ Magazine Reviews Rainbow Valley
Farmers’ Magazine (Toronto), 1 January 1920, 26–27.
The light deftness of literary touch which is the gift of L.M. Montgomery is something that even a Jane Austen might almost envy, for she has the power of setting before us the events and people of everyday life in a typical Canadian community, and of showing us with a fine, sympathetic insight the humor, the beauty and the pathos of what might have passed by us as commonplace or unworthy of attention.
“Rainbow Valley” is peopled with children whose pranks upset the serenity of the “even tenor of the way,” but in whose boisterousness there is nothing of downright wickedness.
And as every community has its share of persons who are busily engaged in “minding other people’s business,” here we have those who are greatly interested in the widowed condition of the occupant of the manse and the seeming wildness of his unmothered children.
At the back of it all the author sees the guiding hand of Romance who weaves before our eyes a truly delightful pattern of life.
The Christian Endeavor World Reviews Rainbow Valley
The Christian Endeavor World (Boston), 27 November 1919, 171.
The scene of L.M. Montgomery’s latest novel, “Rainbow Valley,” is Prince Edward Island, which the author knows and loves so well. Anne Shirley, the Anne of “Anne of Green Gables” and other books, appears again in this volume, fresh and bright and delightful as ever. The centre of the story, however, is the manse to which has come a rather absent-minded minister, a widower with a family. The story deals with the adventures of the young folks, but the chief charm of the book is the humor that glows throughout. The author has succeeded in clothing the common interests of country life with the glory of romance, and has invested with interest the every-day talk and commonplace events of the community. “Rainbow Valley” makes delightful reading; the children are so human, so full of fun and harmless mischief, that they win our sympathy at once.
The Christian Endeavor World Reviews Further Chronicles of Avonlea
The Christian Endeavor World (Boston), 27 May 1920, 686.
L.M. Montgomery has done for Prince Edward Island what “Ian Maclaren” did for Drumtochty. It is no small achievement to create so interesting and charming a figure as Anne of Green Gables and to people the region about Avonlea with real characters. Miss Montgomery has the gift of swift and accurate characterization, and not a little of the pleasure in reading her books comes from those flashes of insight that she puts into a few winged words. The present volume, “Further Chronicles of Avonlea,” is a book of short stories. Lovers of the island will be delighted with the fidelity of the pictures. Some of the tales touch deep feelings; others are in a lighter vein, like “Aunt Cynthia’s Persian Cat,”—a cat which causes a good deal of trouble by reverting to its primitive instincts,—or “The Materializing of Cecil,” a thoroughly enjoyable love story with its striking conclusion. These Chronicles are clean and sweet, and one feels better after reading them.
Springfield Union Reviews Rilla of Ingleside
Springfield (MA) Union, 2 October 1921, Magazine section, 9.
A large number of readers enjoyed L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables” when it appeared some time ago and they will greet with pleasure a reunion of many of the characters in that story in the author’s latest novel, “Rilla of Ingleside.” We are not given the opportunity of welcoming back Anne Shirley herself, but we are introduced to her impulsive, pretty, warm-hearted daughter who plays as heroine in a heart warming romance. Rilla’s real name, we learn, is Marilla, but like many persons with odd names, she is forced to accept an abbreviated title.
“Rilla of Ingleside” is a story of the Great War, a war that disturbed most disagreeably, like every other part of Britain, the tranquil life of Ingleside, on Prince Edward Island, where Rilla makes her home. Here at Ingleside we find those chatty, home loving town people that made “Anne of Green Gables” so interesting and such a success.
[…] It is a simple little plot, but its simplicity is what makes it so impressive. But it is not with the heroes in France with whom we share our greatest interest, but with the ray of sunshine at home, the charming, sympathetic, human girl Rilla. Her daily routine of life, her thoughts and inspirations make the most interesting of reading under the skilful pen of Miss Montgomery and when the end of the book is reached, we have that feeling taht [sic] we h[a]ve met some most enjoyable persons, not to mention a cat and a dog that play a more or less prominent part in the story.
The story, dealing as it does with every day people in an every day town, is human throughout. The story is written to entertain and as such it fulfills its function with great credit. The author has lost none of her gift for writing lovely description, and we are given the opportunity of enjoying many pen pictures of the English countryside. But the one outstanding beam of sunshine is Rilla, a girl, presented as she is by Miss Montgomery, [who] makes it very simple for the reader to love her.
The Christian Endeavor World Reviews Rilla of Ingleside
The Christian Endeavor World (Boston), 18 May 1922, 652.
In her latest novel, “Rilla of Ingleside,” Miss L.M. Montgomery has given us a faithful as well as an interesting picture of how the war came to a Canadian village, how it affected the people, and what changes it made. Rilla is the daughter of the doctor—a daughter, by the way, of Anne of Green Gables—and at first is rather self-centred. The war and the conditions it brings impose new tasks upon her and bring out latent powers. What is here told of the eager looking for war news must have been true of many places, and the tragedies, the boys that never came back, are but samples of war’s awful toll. There is a fine love-story in this tale, which is written with Miss Montgomery’s well-known charm and genial touch. There is in the book a good deal of laughter, sunshine darting through clouds.
Bibliography
Lefebvre, Benjamin, ed. The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 3: A Legacy in Review. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.
Image Credit
Detail from the cover of the paperback edition of volume 3 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader, featuring a close-up of an edition of Anne of Avonlea published by the Ryerson Press in 1942.
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