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Category: L.M. Montgomery

Website for The Maud Squad

Benjamin Lefebvre

A new website has been launched for The Maud Squad: A Documentary, a film by Lisa Lightbourn-Lay that follows five individuals (including this one) whose lives and careers have been affected by the legacy of L.M. Montgomery. The film, shot throughout the centenary of Anne of Green Gables in 2008, is currently in post-production, but a trailer is now available for viewing.

The photograph above (taken by Jason Nolan) is of me holding hands with a stuffed L.M. Montgomery in Norval Presbyterian Church in November 2002. Yes, you did read that correctly.

UPDATE: The Maud Squad can now be viewed on Vimeo.

Press release: L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature

Benjamin Lefebvre

The following press release is from the L.M. Montgomery Institute:

A new generation of Montgomery scholars converges in Charlottetown

Young scholars from institutions around the globe will converge in Charlottetown June 23 – 27 at the 2010 International L.M. Montgomery Conference, “L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature,” to share their research on the province’s best-known writer.

For Alicia McDonald, an Islander, UPEI alumna and graduate student at the University of Western Ontario, Montgomery’s works have hit close to home. “Having grown up on Prince Edward Island, I found myself drawn to Anne and subsequently, L.M. Montgomery because they were talking about places I knew, and represented kindred spirits who understood what it was like to grow up in a rural area where everyone knows you. As I’ve gotten older and have traveled further away from PEI, I’ve found Montgomery’s vivid descriptions of our Island and rural culture to be a stunning reminder of home that I can easily carry with me.” McDonald’s presentation, “Literary Tourism – Anne of Green Gables and Twilight as Tourist Attractions,” takes place Saturday, June 26.

Emily Woster, a PhD student at Illinois State University, will be attending the L.M.M. Conference for the third time, along with her mother, Christy Woster. “My love of all things L.M.M. began when my mother named me ‘Emily’ and my sister ‘Anne’ five years later,” says Woster of her interest in Montgomery. L.M.M. has provided her both professional and personal opportunities and lots of “scope for imagination.” The pair will be giving their presentation, entitled “A Book by Its Cover: Collecting the Artistic Interpretations of L.M. Montgomery’s Works,” together on Sunday, June 27.

Jean Mitchell, an associate professor of anthropology at UPEI and co-chair of the 2010 L.M.M. International Conference, sees these presentations as evidence of the continuing interest in Montgomery’s works. “The students’ topics are very far-ranging and eclectic, suggesting Montgomery’s multiple and meaningful influences on a new generation.”

Other student presentations include: Vappu Kannas, of the University of Helsinki, “Familiar landscape in L. M. Montgomery’s Emily series: Nature as the integrating factor in the Finnish translations”; Christiana Salah, of the University of Connecticut, “Bonds of Sea and Shore: Locating the Gothic in Montgomery’s Prehensile Landscape”; Erin Whitmore, of the University of New Brunswick, “The ‘Old-Time Kitchen’: Domesticity, Nature and Avonlea’s Transforming Rural Economy”; and Kathryne Dycus, of the University of Glasgow, “Footprints on the Landscapes of Artistic Creation: “Wanderlust” in the Emily Books”.

All are welcome to register, and day and session passes are available for those unable to attend the full conference. For information and to register, visit lmmontgomery.ca/events/conference2010, email katmacdonal2@upei.ca, or call 902-628-4346.

Press release: Epperly to Headline 2010 Montgomery Conference

Benjamin Lefebvre

The following press release announces the 9th International L.M. Montgomery conference, L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature, hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute of the University of Prince Edward Island on 23–27 June 2010. For more information, including a list of scheduled events, see the conference website.

Former UPEI president Dr. Elizabeth Rollins (‘Betsy’) Epperly, a world-renowned scholar and author on the life and work of L.M. Montgomery, will headline the international conference, “L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature” running June 23 to 27 at UPEI. Her talk, “Natural Bridge: L.M. Montgomery and the Architecture of Imaginative Landscapes” promises to be a highlight in four days of discussion and enjoyment of the enduring legacy of the province’s best-known writer.

“We are thrilled that Betsy can be such an important part of this event,” says conference co-chair Dr. Jean Mitchell of UPEI. “Betsy has so much knowledge and passion for Montgomery that people are always eager to hear what she has to say.”

Ever since Epperly helped establish the L.M. Montgomery Institute at UPEI in 1993, its international conference on Montgomery has become an essential focal point for the rapidly-growing field of Montgomery studies. 2010 marks the ninth such conference, and will draw scholars and admirers from across North America and around the world, with presenters from Europe, Australia, Africa, and Asia.

The 2008 Conference attracted some 200 registrants to Charlottetown, and organizers expect a similarly enthusiastic response this year. Besides Epperly’s keynote, highlights will include: panel discussions of responses to Montgomery in Asia and Europe; a presentation by Canada Research Chair and leading Montgomery scholar Irene Gammel; and the PEI launch of two publications of recently-rediscovered Montgomery works, The Blythes Are Quoted (edited by conference co-chair and LMMI visiting scholar Dr. Benjamin Lefebvre) and Una of the Garden. All are welcome to register, and day and session passes are available for those unable to attend the full conference. For more information and to register, visit lmmontgomery.ca/events/conference2010, e-mail cydennis@upei.ca, or call 902-628-4346.

The Blythes Are Quoted on CBC’s “Year in Books”

Benjamin Lefebvre 2 Comments

The publication of The Blythes Are Quoted has been selected as one of the “10 biggest publishing stories of 2009” on a CBC.ca news story:

Fans of the precocious, freckle-faced redhead from P.E.I. had reason to rejoice this year when an amended version of the final Anne Shirley stories was released under a new title, The Blythes Are Quoted. But the book’s additional 100 pages revealed a darker story – complete with references to adultery and suicide. Novelist Jane Urquhart ably provided a context for these bleak scenes in her comprehensive, unflinching biography of Anne’s author, Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne’s banner year ended with a triumphant Sotheby’s auction – proof that great CanLit never goes out of fashion.

See “The Year in Books” for the full story.

Five-Day Extension for LMMI Conference

Benjamin Lefebvre

Due to an unexpected technological difficulty, Jean Mitchell and I would like to offer a five-day extension to everyone interested in submitting a proposal to the L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature conference, to be hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute and held at the University of Prince Edward Island. Please send your abstracts and full contact information in the body of an e-mail to lmmi@upei.ca by Monday, 21 September at the very latest.

The call for papers can be found here.

CFP: L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature (updated)

Benjamin Lefebvre

L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature
9th International Conference
University of Prince Edward Island
23-27 June 2010

At the ninth biennial conference hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute (University of Prince Edward Island), we invite you to consider L.M. Montgomery and the matter of nature. In recent years, the matter of nature has been the subject of much contested debate and theoretical innovation across disciplines. While multiple romanticisms have informed L.M. Montgomery’s passionate views of the natural world, her complex descriptions show her writing both of and for nature. This complexity extends as well to the depiction of cultural and gendered mores (domesticity, friendship, faith, community, biological determinism) as both natural and cultural. In all its forms, nature situates binary relationships that are often represented as hierarchical and oppositional: nature and culture; child and adult; animal and human; female and male; emotion and reason; body and mind; traditional and modern; raw and cooked; wild and domestic; rural and urban.

We invite the submission of abstracts that consider these issues in relation to Montgomery’s fiction, poetry, life writing, photographs, and scrapbooks, as well as the range of adapted texts in the areas of film, television, theatre, tourism, and online communities. Possible questions include:

  • What are the effects of the representations and images of nature that are crafted and circulated in Montgomery’s work?
  • How do Montgomery’s narrations of nature shape children and adults within and across cultures?
  • How do particular constructions of nature work in fiction, across such differences as gender, race, culture, and class?
  • What are the cultural and historical contingencies surrounding nature in Montgomery’s work?
  • What does it mean to consider Montgomery as a “green” writer (Doody) or as a proto-ecofeminist (Holmes)?
  • What do Montgomery’s provocative readings of nature offer us at a time of environmental crises and ecological preoccupations?
  • How does the notion of “nature” impact some of the most central preoccupations in Montgomery’s fiction, poetry, and life writing (the nature of war, of mental illness, of cultural inheritance, of conflict, of same-sex friendships and of heterosexual marriage, of cultural memory, of national ideologies)?

Abstracts should clearly articulate the paper’s argument and demonstrate familiarity with current scholarship in the field (please see http://lmmresearch.org/bibliography for an updated bibliography). For more information, please contact the conference co-chairs directly: Dr. Benjamin Lefebvre (ben@roomofbensown.net) and Dr. Jean Mitchell (mjmitchell@upei.ca). All proposals will be vetted blind and should therefore contain no identifying information.

Please submit one-page abstracts and short biographical sketches by 15 September 2009 to the L.M. Montgomery Institute’s OCS page (http://ocs.vre.upei.ca/index.php/lmmi/2010).

If you’ve already submitted an abstract for the 2010 Conference, please verify that it has been received by e-mailing the director at lmmi@upei.ca. All those who were registered through the 2008 OCS page have been made authors and should go to http://ocs.vre.upei.ca/index.php/lmmi/2010/presenter/submit/1 to submit their abstract. If you were registered but have forgotten your password, please use the Reset Password link located here: http://ocs.vre.upei.ca/index.php/lmmi/2010/login/lostPassword. If this is your first time using OCS for the L.M. Montgomery Conference, then please register yourself as an author here: http://ocs.vre.upei.ca/index.php/lmmi/2010/user/account?source=&requiresPresenter (make sure to select the “Create account as Author: Able to submit items to the conference” option at the bottom of the registration form).

The 2010 Conference planning is well underway so please be on the lookout for future emails with details concerning accommodations and other events. And as always, if you have any problems, do not hesitate to contact us at lmmi@upei.ca.

The Blythes Are Quoted in The Guardian and Beyond

Benjamin Lefebvre

An article about The Blythes Are Quoted by Alison Flood appears in today’s The Guardian:

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s last work, featuring surprising experiments with poetry and prose, to be published in full

Penguin Canada is due to publish Lucy Maud Montgomery’s final book in its entirety, casting a new shadow over the author of Anne of Green Gables.

[…]

Despite the darker elements to The Blythes Are Quoted, Penguin is hoping to reach children as well as adults, aiming for the readers who bought Budge Wilson’s prequel to Anne’s story, Before Green Gables, last spring.

This story was subsequently picked up by the Wall Street Journal in today’s Morning Roundup blog:

Anne Returns, Again: Someone who wasn’t afraid of sequels is Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of the “Anne of Green Gables” books. Penguin Canada is going to publish the ninth volume of the series in full. “The Blythes Are Quoted” follows freckle-faced heroine Anne Shirley through the First World War.

This story was then picked up again by The Examiner in an article by Peter Franklin called “A scandalous week”:

Lastly, it was revealed just today that Penguin Canada is set to publish an unabridged version of the final book of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic Anne of Green Gables series. Entitled The Blythes Are Quoted, the novel is said to include “adultery, illegitimacy, misogyny, revenge, murder, despair, bitterness, hatred, and death,” as well as an experimentation with storytelling not seen in the other volumes.

This development adds to the growing pall around Montgomery’s public perception; her granddaughter admitted last year that the children’s author had died of a drug overdose.

However, most shocking here is Penguin’s plan to market The Blythes Are Quoted in all of its murder and misogyny to kids. Alison Flood writes: “Penguin is hoping to reach children as well as adults, aiming for the readers who bought Budge Wilson’s prequel to Anne’s story, Before Green Gables, last spring.”

The Blythes Are Quoted in Quill & Quire’s Fall Preview

Benjamin Lefebvre

The Blythes Are Quoted has been included in the Canadian fiction section of Quill & Quire‘s Fall Preview, compiled by Steven W. Beattie and included in the July-August 2009 issue, available now:

Benjamin Lefebvre edits The Blythes Are Quoted (Penguin Canada, $25 cl., Oct.), a posthumous novel from L.M. Montgomery that features the author’s usual themes: adultery, misogyny, revenge, and murder.