McKenzie, Andrea, and Jane Ledwell, eds. L.M. Montgomery and War. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017.
Paratexts: Introduction by Andrea McKenzie and Jane Ledwell
6” x 9”, x + 269 pp., 978-0-7735-4981-4 (trade paperback), 978-0-7735-4980-7 (unjacketed hardcover)
L.M. Montgomery and War is a collection of essays edited and introduced by Andrea McKenzie and Jane Ledwell and based on an international conference hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute and held at the University of Prince Edward Island in June 2014. It features original scholarship by Elizabeth Epperly, Susan Fisher, Maureen O. Gallagher, Irene Gammel, Sarah Glassford, Caroline E. Jones, Andrea McKenzie, E. Holly Pike, Laura M. Robinson, and Jonathan F. Vance. It was published as both a trade paperback and an unjacketed hardcover by McGill-Queen’s University Press in May 2017.
- L.M. Montgomery and War at McGill-Queen’s University Press
From the Back Cover
War marked L.M. Montgomery’s personal life and writing. As an eleven-year-old, she experienced the suspense of waiting months for news about her father, who fought during the North-West Resistance of 1885. During the First World War, she actively led women’s war efforts in her community, while suffering anguish at the horrors taking place overseas. Through her novels, Montgomery engages directly with the global conflicts of her time, from the North-West Resistance to the Second World War. Given the influence of her wartime writing on Canada’s cultural memories, L.M. Montgomery and War restores Montgomery to her rightful place as a major war writer.
Reassessing Montgomery’s position in the canon of war literature, contributors to this volume explore three central themes in their essays: her writing in the context of contemporaneous Canadian novelists, artists, and poets; questions about her conceptions of gender identity, war work, and nationalism across enemy lines; and the themes of hurt and healing in her interwar works.
Drawing on new perspectives from war studies, literary studies, historical studies, gender studies, and visual art, L.M. Montgomery and War explores new ways to consider the iconic Canadian writer and her work.
Contents
Figures (vii–viii)
Acknowledgments (ix–x)
Introduction / Andrea McKenzie and Jane Ledwell (3–37)
Part One: The Canons of War
1. “Some Great Crisis of Storm and Stress”: L.M. Montgomery, Canadian Literature, and the Great War / Jonathan F. Vance (41–55)
2. Mapping Patriotic Memory: L.M. Montgomery, Mary Riter Hamilton, and the Great War / Irene Gammel (56–77)
3. Education for War: Anne of Green Gables and Rilla of Ingleside / E. Holly Pike (78–93)
4. “Watchman, What of the Night?”: L.M. Montgomery’s Poems of War / Susan Fisher (94–109)
Part Two: Gendering War
5. L.M. Montgomery’s Great War: The Home as Battleground in Rilla of Ingleside / Laura M. Robinson (113–27)
6. “I Must Do Something to Help at Home”: Rilla of Ingleside in the Context of Real Women’s War Work / Sarah Glassford (128–45)
7. Across Enemy Lines: Gender and Nationalism in Else Ury’s and L.M. Montgomery’s Great War Novels / Maureen O. Gallagher (146–64)
Part Three: Healing or Hurt? The Aftermath
8. The Shadows of War: Interstitial Grief in L.M. Montgomery’s Final Novels / Caroline E. Jones (167–83)
9. Women at War? One Hundred Years of Visualizing Rilla / Andrea McKenzie (184–213)
10. Emily’s Quest: L.M. Montgomery’s Green Alternative to Despair and War? / Elizabeth Epperly (214–33)
Bibliography (235–53)
Contributors (255–58)
Index (259–69)
Reviews
Reviews by Gisèle M. Baxter, Jaclyn Carter, Carole Gerson, Neta Gordon, and Adrienne Kertzer.