The L.M. Montgomery Reader

Volume Two: A Critical Heritage

By (author) Benjamin Lefebvre
Categories: Literature: history and criticism, Biography, Literature and Literary studies
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Hardcover : 9781442644922, 464 pages, May 2014
Hardcover : 9781442644915, 464 pages, December 2013

Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

 

Introduction: A Critical Heritage
BENJAMIN LEFEBVRE

 

A Note on the Text

 

1. Lucy Maud Montgomery 1874–1942 (1966)
ELIZABETH WATERSTON

 

2. The Fair World of L. M. Montgomery (1973)
HELEN PORTER

 

3. Anne of Green Gables and the Regional Idyll (1983)
T. D. MACLULICH

 

4. Little Orphan Mary: Anne’s Hoydenish Double (1989)

>ROSAMOND BAILEY

 

5. Subverting the Trite: L. M. Montgomery’s “Room of Her Own” (1992)
MARY RUBIO

 

6. Women’s Oral Narrative Traditions as Depicted in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Fiction, 1918–1939 (1993)
DIANE TYE

 

7. L. M. Montgomery’s Rilla of Ingleside: Intention, Inclusion, Implosion (1994)
OWEN DUDLEY EDWARDS

 

8. Decoding L. M. Montgomery’s Journals / Encoding a Critical Practice for Women’s Private Literature (1994)
HELEN M. BUSS

 

9. “Fitted to Earn Her Own Living”: Figures of the New Woman in the Writing of L. M. Montgomery (1995)
CAROLE GERSON

 

10. “Pruned Down and Branched Out”: Embracing Contradiction in Anne of Green Gables (1995)
LAURA M. ROBINSON

 

11. Finding L. M. Montgomery’s Short Stories (1995)
REA WILMSHURST

 

12. L. M. Montgomery’s Manuscript Revisions (1995)
ELIZABETH EPPERLY

 

13. “My Secret Garden”: Dis/Pleasure in L. M. Montgomery and F. P. Grove (1999)
IRENE GAMMEL

 

14. Writing with a “Definite Purpose”: L. M. Montgomery, Nellie L. McClung and the Politics of Imperial Motherhood in Fiction for Children (2000)
CECILY DEVEREUX

 

15. Kinship and Nation in Amelia (1848) and Anne of Green Gables (1908) (2002)
MONIQUE DULL

 

16. The Maud Squad (2002)
CYNTHIA BROUSE

 

17. “The Golden Road of Youth”: L. M. Montgomery and British Children’s Books (2004)
JENNIFER H. LITSTER

 

18. Women at War: L. M. Montgomery, the Great War, and Canadian Cultural Memory (2008)
ANDREA MCKENZIE

 

19. Anne of Green Gables / Akage no An: The Flowers of Quiet Happiness (2008)
EMILY AOIFE SOMERS

 

20. Archival Adventures with L. M. Montgomery; or, “As Long as the Leaves Hold Together” (2012)
VANESSA BROWN AND BENJAMIN LEFEBVRE

 

Sources

Bibliography

Index

 

Description

Following on the heels of the first volume of The L. M. Montgomery Reader, this second volume narrates the development of L. M. Montgomery’s (1874–1942) critical reputation in the seventy years since her death. Edited by leading Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre, it traces milestones and turning points such as adaptations for stage and screen, posthumous publications, and the development of Montgomery Studies as a scholarly field. Lefebvre’s introduction also considers Montgomery’s publishing history in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom at a time when her work remained in print not because it was considered part of a university canon of literature, but simply due to the continued interest of readers. The twenty samples of Montgomery scholarship included in this volume broach topics such as gender and genre, narrative strategies in fiction and life writing, translation, and Montgomery’s archival papers. They reflect shifts in Montgomery's critical reputation decade by decade: the 1960s, when a milestone chapter on Montgomery coincided with a second wave of texts seeking to create a canon of Canadian literature; the 1970s, in the midst of a sustained reassessment of popular fiction and of literature by women; the 1980s, when the publication of Montgomery’s life writing, which coincided with the broadcast of critically acclaimed television productions adapted from her fiction, radically altered how readers perceived her and her work; the 1990s, when a conference series on Montgomery began to generate a sustained amount of scholarship; and the opening years of the twenty-first century, when the field of Montgomery Studies became both international and interdisciplinary. This is the first book to consider the posthumous life of one of Canada's most enduringly popular authors.

Awards

  • Winner, PROSE Award for Literature awarded by Association of American Publishers 2016

Reviews

“Both scholars and devoted readers of this complex Canadian author will find it fascinating. ”

- Barbara L. Talcroft

‘Lefebvre’s archival research is thorough and often brilliant, making the Reader an invaluable trove not only for Montgomery scholars but also for those working with the reception history of Canadian writers. ’

- Anne Furlong