An overview of L.M. Montgomery-related events and publications from 2024, the 150th anniversary of Montgomery’s birth.
Contents
Preamble
Featured Content
Projects
Readathon
Events
Web
Calls for Papers
Site Updates
In Memoriam
Bibliography
Image Credit
Preamble
In a journal entry dated November 30, 1914, L.M. Montgomery wrote the following regarding her fortieth birthday:
Once I thought forty must be the end of everything. But it isn’t! I don’t feel any older today than yesterday—when I was only 39! Or the day before yesterday when I was—19! Thank God we don’t feel old. Life is much richer, fuller, happier, more comfortable for me now than it was when I was twenty. I have won the success I resolved to win twenty years ago. It is worth the struggle—but I would not wish to be twenty again with the struggle still before me. No, I am quite content to be forty. (LMMCJ, 1: 172–73)
I sit at my desk 110 years after the date of this journal entry and therefore 150 years after Montgomery’s birth in 1874. There are wonderful Montgomery-related events happening today in tourist sites in Prince Edward Island and Ontario, but I’m staying home, for the simple reason that my partner and I are hosting good friends for dinner. I flipped through my copy of Aunt Maud’s Recipe Book to look for a dessert, but since my culinary ambitions often surpass my skills, I will content myself by preparing some raspberry cordial, courtesy of Kate Macdonald Butler’s The Anne of Green Gables Cookbook.
A flurry of activity all over the world has commemorated the 150th anniversary of Montgomery’s birth. For me personally, this year also marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the year my Montgomery work began in earnest. My first three Montgomery-related publications appeared in 1999, the same year I began a master’s degree in English at the University of Guelph, where I had the chance to immerse myself in the university library’s extensive Montgomery holdings.
But an anniversary isn’t simply about looking back at the past. It should be an opportunity to take stock of the past in order to ponder the future.
This year, there have been several new books to read, events to attend, initiatives to participate in, and projects to look forward to (including an exciting new stage adaptation of Anne of Green Gables by Kat Sandler that will be part of the Stratford Festival’s 2025 season). Here are some of the highlights.
Featured Content
From the Archive
L.M. Montgomery’s “I Have Come Home” (1938) (13 September 2024)
News and Updates
A Note on the L.M. Montgomery Bibliography (18 August 2024)
Texts and Contexts
This Is September (21 September 2024)
Spotlight on International Scholarship II (29 November 2024)
Projects
Two New Books
I’m pleased to announce that Meghan Macdonald, publisher at Dundurn Press (Toronto), has acquired world print rights to two trade non-fiction projects that I’ve been working on for several years.
The Glory and the Dream: L.M. Montgomery’s Writing Life draws from some never-before-seen materials as well as articles, letters, and diaries by L.M. Montgomery to paint a comprehensive portrait of the professional career of one of the most successful writers of the twentieth century. Including an analysis of her depiction of writers in her fiction, issues of copyright, advertising strategies, and advice for aspiring writers, this highly contemporary work will be sure to enthral Montgomery’s worldwide readership with the inner life of the author of Anne of Green Gables.
Next, Reimagining Anne: L.M. Montgomery’s Literary Icon on Screen looks at film and television adaptations of Anne of Green Gables over a century, from a lost 1919 silent film to the CBC/Netflix hit Anne with an “E.” It examines the multiple ways that these productions draw from and reinterpret Montgomery’s iconic literary character and the text of her perennially bestselling novel, and it draws from rarely seen sources to piece together some of the controversies and disagreements happening behind the scenes.
Both deals were arranged by Chris Casuccio of Westwood Creative Artists, who has sold audiobook rights to both books to Tantor Media. For film and tv rights, please contact chris[at]wcaltd[dot]com. For all other rights, including translation rights, please contact rights[at]dundurn[dot]com.
Helen E. Stubbs Memorial Lecture
Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books, Toronto Public Library, 14 November 2024
It was a great honour for me to give this year’s Helen E. Stubbs Memorial Lecture at the Toronto Public Library’s Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books. My talk, delivered on November 14, was entitled “L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables Through the Years: Texts, Covers, Readers.” I so appreciated the chance to see some old friends and to meet fellow readers interested in L.M. Montgomery’s life, work, and legacy. I also had the chance to look at the exhibit that the Osborne had been running all fall, called Maud’s World: Celebrating 150 Years of Lucy Maud Montgomery.
The text of L.M. Montgomery’s first and most famous book, Anne of Green Gables, has largely stayed the same since it was published in 1908. But everything else—from cover designs to the technologies people use to read and discuss books—has changed immeasurably since then. In this lecture, novelist and scholar Benjamin Lefebvre shares some of the discoveries he has made throughout his many years as a Montgomery scholar and offers new insights about this perennially popular book, how it fits within Montgomery’s lifetime body of work, and how it continues to be reprinted today.
My talk centred on the target audience of Anne of Green Gables, and by extension the rest of Montgomery’s work. While it may seem obvious that a novel about a girl was intended for girl readers, that doesn’t account for the growing number of abridged editions for the same audience, the fact that everyone in that room was an adult, and publicity efforts for the novel during its first year of publication that positioned her work as a novel for adults. In order to think about gaps between target audience and actual audience, I drew on my past experience as a teen viewer of a surprisingly wide range of television shows that began airing in 1990 and that made a lasting impression on me: Road to Avonlea, The Simpsons, and Twin Peaks.
An expanded version of the lecture will be published as a chapbook sometime in 2025, and I’m planning to do some kind of audio-visual version of it as well. The longer version will include some sections I didn’t get to, concerning my own foray into fiction writing and some additional complexities about target audience. I’ll share more details once they’ve been finalized!
Readathon
The L.M. Montgomery Readathon, a Facebook discussion group managed by Andrea McKenzie, kept busy throughout 2024 with guided discussions of Anne’s House of Dreams and Magic for Marigold. See Andrea’s YouTube channel for videos of participants taking turns reading chapters from these novels.
Becoming Green Gables: The Diary of Myrtle Webb and Her Famous Farmhouse
Alan MacEachern
McGill-Queen’s University Press (Montreal and Kingston) published Becoming Green Gables: The Diary of Myrtle Webb and Her Famous Farmhouse, by Alan MacEachern, in June.
In 1909 Myrtle and Ernest Webb took possession of an ordinary farm in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island. Ordinary but for one thing: it was already becoming known as inspiration for Anne of Green Gables, the novel written by Myrtle’s cousin Lucy Maud Montgomery and published to international acclaim a year earlier. The Webbs welcomed visitors to “Green Gables” and soon took in summer boarders, making their home the heart of PEI’s tourist trade. In the 1930s the farm was made the centrepiece of a new national park—and still the family lived there for another decade, caretakers of their own home.
During these years Myrtle kept a diary. When she first picked up the pencil in 1924, she was a forty-year-old homemaker running a household of eight. By the time she set the pencil down in 1954, she was a seventy-year-old widow, no longer resident in what was now the most famous house in Canada. Becoming Green Gables tells the story of Myrtle Webb and her family, and the making of Green Gables. Alan MacEachern reproduces a selection of the diary’s daily entries, using them as springboards to examine topics ranging from the adoption of modern conveniences to the home front hosting of soldiers in wartime and visits from Aunt Maud herself.
Becoming Green Gables is not only the Webbs’ own story; it is also a history of their famous home, their community, the nation, and the world in which they lived.
The Blue Castle: The Original Manuscript
edited by Carolyn Strom Collins
Nimbus Publishing published The Blue Castle: The Original Manuscript, edited by Carolyn Strom Collins, in May.
Published for the first time ever, the first draft of The Blue Castle exactly as L.M. Montgomery originally wrote it, with critical context from a leading Montgomery scholar.
Available for the first time ever, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s original manuscript ofThe Blue Castle is presented with scribbled notes, additions and deletions, and other pre-publication changes, offering fascinating new insight into the writing process of one of Canada’s most beloved writers.
First published in 1926, The Blue Castle is one of Montgomery’s few adult novels—and the only one set entirely outside of the author’s home province of Prince Edward Island. Montgomery scholar Carolyn Strom Collins provides a transcription and annotation of Montgomery’s handwritten manuscript, showing how the edits were integrated to form the published novel. Major updates include changing the main character’s name from Miranda to Valancy, and Barney’s beloved cat from Jigglesqueak to Banjo.
Edited with a deep respect for the writer’s creative process and featuring high-quality photographs of select pages of the author’s manuscript, The Blue Castle: The Original Manuscript is a necessary addition to any Montgomery lover’s collection.
L.M. Montgomery’s “Emily of New Moon”: A Children’s Classic at 100
Edited by Yan Du and Joe Sutliff Sanders
University Press of Mississippi (Jackson) published L.M. Montgomery’s “Emily of New Moon”: A Children’s Classic at 100, edited by Yan Du and Joe Sutliff Sanders, in April, as part of the Children’s Literature Association series. In addition to an introduction by the editors, the volume features original scholarship by Yoshiko Akamatsu, Carol L. Beran, Rita Bode, Lesley D. Clement, Allison McBain Hudson, Kate Lawson, Jessica Wen Hui Lim, Lindsey McMaster, E. Holly Pike, Katharine Slater, Margaret Steffler, and Anastasia Ulanowicz.
A collection of essays focused on the often-overlooked novel series by the beloved author of Anne of Green Gables
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942) was a Canadian author best known for writing the wildly popular Anne of Green Gables. At the time of its publication in 1908, it was an immediate bestseller and launched Montgomery to fame. Less known than the dreamy and accidentally mischievous Anne Shirley is Emily Byrd Starr, the title character in the trilogy that followed much later in Montgomery’s professional career, Emily of New Moon. Published in 1923, Emily of New Moon is the first in a series of novels about an orphan girl growing up on Prince Edward Island, a story that mirrors Anne’s but intentionally resists many of the defining qualities of Montgomery’s most famous creation.
Despite being overshadowed by the immense popularity of Anne of Green Gables, the Emily of New Moon trilogy has become a subject of endless fascination to fans and scholars around the world. The trilogy was conceived during an important phase in Montgomery’s career during which she turned from Anne and plunged into more intricate aspects of gender, adolescence, nature, and authorship. While the novels have attracted rich critical attention since their publication, book-length studies proved surprisingly scarce. L.M. Montgomery’s “Emily of New Moon”: A Children’s Classic at 100 is the first scholarly volume exclusively dedicated to the trilogy, coalescing different research perspectives. It offers a fresh point of entrance into a well-loved classic at its one-hundredth anniversary.
The ANNEthology: A Collection of Kindred Spirits Inspired by the Canadian Icon
compiled by Judith Graves
Edited by Robin Sutherland
Acorn Press (Charlottetown) published The ANNEthology: A Collection of Kindred Spirits Inspired by the Canadian Icon in June. This anthology of stories reimagines Anne for contemporary readers (with familiar titles such as “Anne of the Silver Trail” and “Matthew Insists on Ripped Jeans”). Compiled by Judith Graves and edited by Robin Sutherland, the book consists of short stories by Paul Coccia, Hope Dalvay, Matthew Dawkins, Natasha Deen, Judith Graves, Shari Green, Mere Joyce, Deirdre Kessler, Susie Moloney, and Susan White. According to Inderjit Deogun’s profile of the book for Quill and Quire,
“Graves’s pitch was simple: the character had to be named Anne; there had to be a reference to red hair; the character had to be adopted, but that could be the backstory; and the story had to tie back to themes in the original Anne of Green Gables, of home, belonging, and displacement. From there, contributors could take Anne anywhere they wanted.”
Translations
Monsieur Toussaint Louverture, a publisher in France, published new translations of the three Emily books, translated by Laure-Lyn Boisseau-Axmann, as part of its Monsieur Toussaint Laventure series: Emily of New Moon as Emily de New Moon, Emily Climbs as L’ascension d’Emily, and Emily’s Quest as La quête d’Emily.
Additional Print Texts
Rock’s Mills Press, publishers of five volumes so far of L.M. Montgomery’s Complete Journals, published John Passfield’s novel L.M. Montgomery: I Gave You Life in February. This novel dramatizes Montgomery in 1938, writing Anne of Ingleside, which would be the last book she published in her lifetime.
St. Martin’s Press (New York) published Carrie Mullins’s The Book of Mothers: How Literature Can Help Us Reinvent Modern Motherhood in May. This book-length study discusses Montgomery’s work in chapter 4, entitled “Natural Mamas: Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (1908).”
Janet Wilson published Maud of Green Gables: How L.M. Montgomery’s Anne Enchanted the World in September. This short book, whose text is accompanied by Wilson’s own artwork, “explores the intertwined legacies of Anne Shirley’s world and Montgomery’s life, tracing the story of Anne of Green Gables from conception to the 1908 publication, and through its meteoric rise to becoming a beloved classic in Canada and around the world.” Visit Janet Wilson’s website to order a copy of the book as well as greeting cards featuring some of the artwork that appears in it.
Tundra Books (Toronto) published Kallie George’s Anne Dreams, the sixth book in her series of abridgements of Anne of Green Gables, in August, followed by a paperback edition of the fifth book, Anne Dares, in September. Three single-volume abridgements of the novel appeared this year: one by Katherine Woodfine for Nosy Crow (London), one by Gemma Barder for Sweet Cherry Publishing (Leicester, UK) as part of its Easy Classics/The Children’s Classics Collection, and one in French by Laureen Bouyssou for Larousse Jeunesse (Paris).
Additional book-length extensions published in 2024 include Catherine Little’s picture book Anne of the Library-on-the-Hill (Plumleaf Press), A.C. Blake’s collection of poems Celebrating Maud: A Tribute to L.M. Montgomery (Birdtree Press), and Carley Fortune’s novel This Summer Will Be Different (Viking).
Several more contributions appeared throughout 2024, including special journal collections, dissertations/theses, book chapters, journal articles, shorter extensions, paratexts, and reviews, as well as the newsletter The Shining Scroll.
Events
L.M. Montgomery and the Politics of Home
University of Prince Edward Island, 19–23 June 2024
Co-chairs: Caroline E. Jones and Laura M. Robinson
L.M. Montgomery and the Politics of Home, the sixteenth biennial international conference hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute, was held at the University of Prince Edward Island on 19–23 June 2024. Co-chaired by Caroline E. Jones and Laura M. Robinson, the conference welcomed speakers from Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Finland, Iran, Italy, Japan, Norway, Poland, Sweden, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
When confronting the timeless questions “Who am I?” and “Where do I belong?”, we must reckon with those two inarguable forces: politics and home. These forces inform who we are and how we are in the world. L.M. Montgomery was no exception—she was formed by the cultural and domestic politics of her time and place, and she engaged those politics in her work, alongside the ubiquitous motif of home. The year 2024 marks the 150th anniversary of Montgomery’s birth, and we will especially engage the specificity of the homes that shaped her as author, diarist, and public and private citizen.
Highlights from this conference included the following:
- Optional workshops by Andrea McKenzie (“The Icing on the Cake: Baking with L.M. Montgomery”) and Julie Sellers (“Writing Home: A Writing Workshop for Prose and Poetry”
- Keynote addresses by Elizabeth Epperly (“Montgomery at Home: Two Caves and a Book”), Caroline E. Jones (“L.M. Montgomery and the Politics of Home”), and Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (“Home, Hope, and Humanization: An Autoethnographic Exploration of Lucy Maud Montgomery”)
- Plenary panel with Yoshiko Akamatsu and Emily Woster
- “A Conversation Between the Literary Houses of L.M. Montgomery, Emily Carr, Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, and Elizabeth Gaskell,” hosted by Bonnie Tulloch and moderated by Hayley Solano
- “EDI in Action: Connecting the Politics of Home and Community,” a round table discussion facilitated by Melanie Fishbane and Poushali Bhadury
- “Home and Displacement: Fictionalizing the Life of L.M. Montgomery,” with readings by Melanie J. Fishbane and Logan Steiner
- Bus tour of Montgomery- and Anne-related tourist sites
“L.M. Montgomery and the Politics of Home,” edited by Caroline E. Jones and E. Holly Pike, will be published as a special collection of Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies.
For more information about this conference, see the event page at the L.M. Montgomery Institute website.
Kindred Spirits: The Lucy Maud Montgomery Legacy as Interpreted by Contemporary Book Artists
Various Locations, June–December 2024
Kindred Spirits, billed as “a touring book arts exhibition that responds to the work and life of Lucy Maud Montgomery,” consists of pieces created by members of the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild (CBBAG). This exhibit appeared at Confederation Court Mall in Charlottetown from 21 June to 23 August 2024, followed by stops at Carleton University’s MacOdrum Library (Ottawa) from 16 September to 7 December 2024. It will then move to several locations in New Brunswick, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia until the end of 2026. Visit the Kindred Spirits website for more information and to order a copy of the exhibit catalogue.
Maud’s World: Celebrating 150 Years of Lucy Maud Montgomery
Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books, Toronto Public Library, 9 September–1 December 2024
Celebrate Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 150th birthday with the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books. From first editions of her classic novels to original letters penned by Montgomery herself, this exhibition explores the author’s fascinating life and timeless stories. Best known for Anne of Green Gables, Montgomery was a Canadian icon in her own right, publishing 20 novels and countless short stories during her long career.
Patterns and Puffed Sleeves: Costume Design Through Anne of Green Gables
Toronto Reference Library, 5 October 2024–12 January 2025
In celebration of the 150th birthday of Lucy Maud Montgomery we are taking a look into our arts collections to share some of the costume designs from various Anne of Green Gables productions. Lucy Maud’s legacy in literature and beyond has been embodied in the phenomenal success of the Anne of Green Gables series.
With a focus on costume designs from four Anne of Green Gables productions, including the collection from Martha Mann, costume designer for the now iconic Anne of Green Gables CBC mini-series), this exhibit is a new way to dive into the world of Anne. Exhibit runs to January 12.
A Nod to Maud: Celebrating 150 Years of L.M. Montgomery
Leaskdale Manse and Blue Heron Studio, 5 October 2024
The Lucy Maud Montgomery Society of Ontario hosted a celebration for Montgomery at the Leaskdale Manse National Historic Site. See the event page on the Culture Days website for more information.
Blue Heron Studio in Uxbridge held a book launch for Janet Wilson’s Maud of Green Gables and Catherine Little’s Anne of the Library-on-the-Hill, part of the Book Drunkard Festival. See the event page on the Book Drunkard Festival website for more information.
The Literature and Libraries of L.M. Montgomery
University of Guelph, 24 October 2024
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) published 20 novels and many short stories in her lifetime, most notably, the Anne of Green Gables series. To celebrate and to mark the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of L.M. Montgomery, the McLaughlin Library at the University of Guelph is contributing digital images from the author’s private library to The Lucy Maud Montgomery Bookshelf, a project based at the University of Prince Edward Island’s L.M. Montgomery Institute.
Please join us as Dr. Emily Woster from the College of St. Scholastica and curator of The L.M. Montgomery Bookshelf Project speaks about L.M. Montgomery as a lifelong reader, re-reader, bibliophile, and a self-professed “book drunkard.” Dr. Woster will discuss the wealth of evidence Montgomery left of her reading—in journals, scrapbooks, letters, and in her fiction—reflecting both her tastes as a reader and her place in literary history.
Ashley Shifflett McBrayne from the University of Guelph’s Archival & Special Collections will also speak about the state of the L.M. Montgomery Collection at Guelph, and about working with L.M. Montgomery’s private library, elaborating on what we know about the library, what we don’t know, and some of the interesting physical characteristics of these books including their annotations, inscriptions, and inserted materials.
This hybrid event is open to everyone and was made possible with a grant from the Bibliographical Society of America.
See the event page at the University of Guelph Library website for more information.
Web
New Anne Coin from the Royal Canadian Mint
On 26 June 2024 at Green Gables Heritage Place in Prince Edward Island, the Royal Canadian Mint unveiled a new $1 commemorative coin in honour of L.M. Montgomery. The artwork for the coin was created by PEI artist Brenda Jones.
According to an article on Canadian Coin News published on 27 June 2024,
L. M. Montgomery (1874–1942), one of Canada’s most enduringly popular authors, has influenced culture and literature internationally. Publishing hundreds of short stories and poems in addition to 20 novels, she achieved lasting fame through the creation of one of the world’s unforgettable characters: a plucky, talkative orphan girl with red braids, big feelings and imagination, and the same deep love for Prince Edward Island as her creator.
The 2024 $1 commemorative circulation coin pays tribute to L. M. Montgomery, a Canadian literary icon whose writing is treasured by millions worldwide. On the 150th anniversary of her birth, the creator of Anne of Green Gables is the first author to be featured on a Canadian circulation coin, and, fittingly, its design celebrates her creativity. Each Colourized Special Wrap Roll contains 25 selectively coloured commemorative coins; the reverse of each coin offers a colourful view of the Prince Edward Island landscape that inspired so many of Montgomery’s stories, and through her, the world.
Behind the Design: L.M. Montgomery Commemorative $1 Circulation Coin (Royal Canadian Mint)
Calls for Papers
Anne for Everyone: Green Gables, Children of Color, and Global Childhoods (collection of essays)
Edited by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and Sarah Park Dahlen
University Press of Mississippi
Across children’s literature, there are heroines that transcend eras, cultures, and generations. One of the most beloved globally is Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne Shirley—the protagonist of Anne of Green Gables whom Mark Twain famously called “the dearest and most moving and delightful child since the immortal Alice.” Since the initial publication of Anne by L.C. Page & Company in 1908, there have been a multitude of editions, multiple adaptations for screen and stage, and a rich material culture that feature Montgomery’s irrepressible heroine. Anne has become a major figure in Canadian and world youth literature, and continues to have an impact on readers and audience today.
Multiple scholars have engaged Anne of Green Gables in various ways, but what we seek to do in this volume is to consider Anne from the perspective of those who are most underrepresented in children’s literature and children’s literature studies—Indigenous people and people of color, adopted persons, and other people on the margins. In “The Pleasure of Dreaming: How L.M. Montgomery Shaped My Lifeworlds,” Ebony Elizabeth Thomas writes about how though Anne of Green Gables was “removed from [her] by by race, ethnicity, nationality, denomination, and time, there is no other author so important, no body of work so seminal, and no personal philosophy so integral to the woman and scholar [she] is becoming” (The Narrative Compass, 2009, p. 80). Like Thomas, how do other Black girls engage with Anne? How do children in countries outside of the west (Japan? Korea?) read and consume Anne? How do adopted persons relate to Anne as orphan-adoptees? Given that Anne of Green Gables remains such an enduring, worldwide phenomenon, we intend to interrogate what Anne and the inhabitants of Prince Edward Island mean to these other and othered populations.
Inspired by the stories in A Narrative Compass: Stories That Guide Women’s Lives (edited by Betsy Hearne and Roberta Seelinger Trites), we seek for possible inclusion critical essays, criticism, and stories from readers, scholars, and creators whose lives have been influenced by Anne of Green Gables, but whose stories and perspectives remain outside the canon of children’s literature studies. We wish to include essays from multiple perspectives (English, education, library science, media and communication studies, childhood studies, etc.) and from scholars around the globe.
Essays may include topics such as:
- Reader/viewer response to race-related aspects of Anne of Green Gables in various media
- Critical readings of Anne through the lenses of critical adoption studies, critical disability studies, fan studies (fanfiction, fanart, cosplay, conference attendance, etc.) by and about BIPOC and/or LGBTQ fans, Anne within a multicultural Canada (First Nations, immigrant communities, etc.), Anne within a global context (readers and audiences around the world), presences and absences across the series, and more!
350–500 word chapter proposals are due by December 1, 2024. Proposals should be for original essays that have not been published previously (including in conference proceedings) and that are not currently under consideration for another edited collection or journal. Send your proposal and CV to both Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (ebonyt@umich.edu) and Sarah Park Dahlen (spdahlen@illinois.edu).
L.M. Montgomery and the Women (ACCUTE panel, George Brown College, 30 May–3 June 2025)
Organizer and chair: Rita Bode (Trent University)
Canadian women writers (Atwood, Urquhart, O’Neill among others) have attested to the influence of L. M. Montgomery’s work on their writing lives. Yet in some ways, Montgomery’s position in Canadian literary studies is still underestimated. Despite the biennial conferences at UPEI and the Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies, both providing a forum for scholarly work, her position in Canadian literary studies remains somewhat precarious. In university courses, for example, she is taught mostly through her best-known work and usually in children’s literature courses. The publication of her journals, edited by Rubio and Waterston beginning in the 1980s, opened up her work to literary approaches (as well as transmedial adaptations) that focused more intently on her darker explorations and the subtle complications that she brings to a keen analysis of society. This panel aims to extend these explorations and welcomes submissions that address Montgomery’s complex handling of social disadvantage, an area in her work that exists both on the surface and in hitherto unrecognized instances. While the panel is open to all proposals (ca. 300 words) on the topic, ones that focus on her later novels (1920s on) and/or include comparative approaches to contemporary women writers are particularly welcome.
Submit your 300-500 word proposal, including a 100-word abstract and a brief biographical note using ACCUTE’s online submission form by November 22, 2024. Please ensure you include the title of the panel you are submitting to. Proposals that are not accepted to the panel will be considered in our general call.
Domestic Cats in Literature (virtual conference, 13–15 March 2025)
Carole Gerson sent me this notice for an upcoming virtual conference on domestic cats in literary texts. Given the recurring role of cats in Montgomery’s work and life writing, Carole thought some Montgomery scholars might be interested in proposing a paper, so I’m passing that information along.
Date: March 13, 2025 – March 15, 2025
Subject Fields: Literature, Animal Studies, Cultural History / Studies, Humanities, Popular Culture Studies
Submissions are invited for a scholarly conference on domestic cats in literature to be hosted online 13–15 March 2025 by the Troy University Department of English.
Papers may address any aspect of the subject, including—but not limited to—the following:
- Cats as characters, symbols, companions, pets, inspiration, environmental pests, guides, thieves, mystical creatures, gods
- Cats and mystery, aesthetics, creativity, abstraction, contemplation, parody, comedy, modernism, myth, the supernatural
- Cats in science fiction, comics, film, young-adult literature, children’s literature
- Cats in the works of specific authors like T. S. Eliot, J. K. Rowling, Lewis Carroll, Edgar Poe, Rudyard Kipling, Mikhail Bulgakov, Stephen King, and others.
Academics at all levels—including undergraduates—are welcome to submit proposals (a 250-word abstract) to Ben P. Robertson (Department of English, Troy University) by 1 February 2025. Email: bprobertson[at]troy[dot]edu.
Site Updates
Over the last few years, I’ve learned as much as I can about how to write for the web. This includes best practices to ensure that web pages will appear prominently in search results—also known as search-engine optimization. Part of that involves making sure that written text is as readable as possible, which means shorter sentences, shorter paragraphs, and shorter sections of text. (Most academics don’t write this way, so learning how to do so has been “uphill work,” as Anne would say.) SEO is also what prompted me to reorganize this website by putting all content into the following categories:
Apparently having a ton of menus and submenus in the header of every page isn’t the best SEO move, so I’ve replaced the menus with a sitemap that lists the entire contents of this website.
I’ve recently switched to a new method for collecting subscriptions to this website and sending emails to subscribers. So if you’d like to receive occasional emails from me with all the latest news, please subscribe! And if you subscribed prior to June 2024, please subscribe again!
In Memoriam
Elizabeth Hillman Waterston (1922–2024)
Canadian writer, scholarly editor, and academic Elizabeth Hillman Waterston died on 18 February at the age of 101. Her innumerable contributions to the field of L.M. Montgomery studies include seven volumes of Montgomery’s journals and a Norton Critical Edition of Anne of Green Gables (all edited jointly with Mary Henley Rubio) as well as the book-length study Magic Island: The Fictions of L.M. Montgomery (2008). For more information about her life and her career, see Elizabeth Waterston’s personal website (which is maintained by her family) or John Lennox and Andrew McIntosh’s article on Elizabeth Waterston in The Canadian Encyclopedia.
Ben Stahl (1932–2024)
American-born visual artist Ben Stahl died on 15 June at the age of ninety-one. His extensive career as a visual artist included cover illustrations for a set of L.M. Montgomery editions published by Bantam-Seal Books in the late 1980s to the mid-1990s.
Robert M. Montgomery (1940–2024)
Robert M. Montgomery died on 29 September at the age of eighty-four. For many years, Robert ran the Senator Donald Montgomery House (home of Montgomery’s paternal grandparents), in Park Corner, Prince Edward Island, as a tourist site. For more information about his life, see the obituary for Robert M. Montgomery on the Davison Funeral Home and Chapel website.
Bibliography
Crawford, Elaine, and Kelly Crawford. Aunt Maud’s Recipe Book: From the Kitchen of L.M. Montgomery. Norval, ON: Crawford’s, 1996.
Macdonald, Kate. The Anne of Green Gables Cookbook. Illustrated by Barbara Di Lella. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Montgomery, L.M. L.M. Montgomery’s Complete Journals: The Ontario Years, 1911–1917. Edited by Jen Rubio. N.p.: Rock’s Mills Press, 2017.
Image Credit
Photograph, by Kirsten Brassard, of Benjamin Lefebvre giving the thirty-sixth annual Helen E. Stubbs Memorial Lecture at the Toronto Public Library on 14 November 2024.
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