Critical Anthologies
The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 3: A Legacy in Review. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. x + 453 pp. Paperback edition, 2020.
Synopsis: This volume collects 370 reviews of all books by L.M. Montgomery published within her lifetime, drawn from periodicals in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Cuba, India, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. These are bookended by paratexts that place the reviews in the broader context of periodical culture in the first half of the twentieth century and that trace the critical reception of a number of posthumous texts in the form of life writing and rediscovered primary work.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442660861.
Paratexts: “Introduction: A Legacy in Review” (3–48), “A Note on the Text” (49–50), headnotes (11,800 words) and notes (7,000 words) for twenty-four chapters, “Epilogue: Posthumous Texts, 1960–2013” (353–90), index (439–53).
Reception: Reviewed in American Review of Canadian Studies, British Journal of Canadian Studies, Canadian Literature, Children’s Literature, Children’s Literature LLC, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada / Cahiers de la Société bibliographique du Canada, and Times Literary Supplement.
The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 2: A Critical Heritage. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. xii + 451 pp. Paperback edition, 2020.
Synopsis: This volume reprints twenty items published between 1966 and 2012, focusing on L.M. Montgomery’s narrative strategies in her fiction and her journals, her multi-age and multinational readerships, early Canadian feminism, and archival sources. The selections are preceded by an introduction that places them in the context of Montgomery’s publishing history and critical reception in the seven decades since her death.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442668607.
Paratexts: “Introduction: A Critical Heritage” (3–49), “A Note on the Text” (50), headnotes (2,850 words) and additional notes (1,300 words) for twenty chapters, index (437–51).
Reception: Reviewed in American Review of Canadian Studies, British Journal of Canadian Studies, Children’s Literature, Children’s Literature LLC, and University of Toronto Quarterly.
The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 1: A Life in Print. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. xiv + 450 pp. Paperback edition, 2020.
Synopsis: This volume gathers more than eighty items published in leading newspapers and magazines throughout L.M. Montgomery’s high-profile career and after her death, including essays by and interviews with her, commentary on her work, coverage of her death and funeral, and tributes to her after her death. Among the highlights are pieces in which Montgomery discusses such topics as the expected outcomes of the Great War for women at home, anxieties about the “modern girl,” the role of minister’s wives in rural communities, and her literary celebrity.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442668560.
Paratexts: “Introduction: A Life in Print” (3–28), “A Note on the Text” (29–30), headnotes (15,000 words) and notes (19,500 words) for eighty-one chapters, index (441–50).
Reception: Reviewed in American Review of Canadian Studies, British Journal of Canadian Studies, Canadian Literature, Children’s Literature, Children’s Literature LLC, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Telegraph-Journal (Saint John, NB), and University of Toronto Quarterly.
Collections of Essays
Textual Transformations in Children’s Literature: Adaptations, Translations, Reconsiderations. New York: Routledge, 2013. xvi + 223 pp. Children’s Literature and Culture. Paperback edition, 2015.
Synopsis: This volume includes eleven chapters on folktales, films, television, anime, DVD sets, book history, online communities, queer revisions, and postcolonial adaptations of texts for children, contributed by scholars in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, and India.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203098479.
Paratexts: “Introduction: Reconsidering Textual Transformations in Children’s Literature” (1–6), index (219–23).
Reception: Reviewed in Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature, Children’s Literature, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms, International Research in Children’s Literature, Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, and The Lion and the Unicorn.
Anne’s World: A New Century of Anne of Green Gables. Jointly with Irene Gammel. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. x + 263 pp.
Synopsis: This interdisciplinary collection of essays proposes several new directions in the study of Anne of Green Gables and its cultural work, anchored in disability studies, ethics, fashion, geography, reception studies, postcolonial theory, bibliotherapy, new media studies, adaptation, and branding.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442690233.
Reception: Reviewed in American Review of Canadian Studies, Canadian Literature, CanText: The Newsletter of the British Association of Canadian Studies Literature Group, Children’s Literature, and English Studies in Canada.
Editions
Rilla of Ingleside, by L.M. Montgomery. Jointly with Andrea McKenzie. Toronto: Viking Canada, 2010. xxvi + 390 pp. Paperback edition by Penguin Canada, 2011.
Synopsis: This new edition of L.M. Montgomery’s novel depicting women and men at the Canadian home front during the First World War, initially intended as the final sequel to Anne of Green Gables, restores the full text of the original 1921 edition and contains supplementary materials that place the text within its historical, cultural, and literary contexts.
Paratexts: Introduction (ix–xix), “A Note on the Text” (xx), “The Origins of the First World War” (xxi–xxiii), headnote for “Canadian Women’s Poetry of the First World War” (351), glossary (354–87), “Further Reading” (388–89), all jointly with Andrea McKenzie.
Reception: Reviewed in CM: Canadian Review of Materials and Toronto Star.
The Blythes Are Quoted, by L.M. Montgomery. Toronto: Viking Canada, 2009. xvi + 527 pp. Paperback edition by Penguin Canada, 2010. Penguin Modern Classics Edition, 2018. xx + 521 pp.
Synopsis: This final book—an experimental blend of fiction, poetry, and dialogue conceived as the last sequel to Anne of Green Gables—was submitted to Montgomery’s publisher the day of her death in 1942. Although an abridged version was published as The Road to Yesterday in 1974, it appears in its entirety for the first time in this edition.
Paratexts (2009/2010 editions): Afterword (511–20), “A Note on the Text” (521–22).
Paratexts (2018 edition): Introduction (ix–xvii), “A Note on the Text” (517–18), “Suggestions for Further Reading” (519–20).
Reception: Reviewed in Canadian Literature, Globe and Mail, Literary Review of Canada, Quill and Quire, Telegraph-Journal (Saint John, NB), and Winnipeg Free Press.
Book Series
The L.M. Montgomery Library. Three volumes to date, with several more in progress. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018–.
Early Canadian Literature. Eight volumes to date, with two forthcoming. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014–.