The L.M. Montgomery Reader: Volume Two: A Critical Heritage edited by Benjamin Lefebvre was published by University of Toronto Press in May 2014. This book republishes a collection of 20 articles and essays that were published in scholarly journals, magazines, and books about L.M. Montgomery's writings and literary reputation since her death. In his introduction, Benjamin Lefebvre states that the book "extends this major reassessment of Montgomery’s critical reputation from the years since her death to the present day. It does so, first, by discussing the major trends, shifts, and turning points in her reception by academic critics and popular readers, and second, by including a selection of twenty items from the interdisciplinary field of L.M. Montgomery Studies from 1966 to 2012."
Here is the description of the volume from University of Toronto Press:
Now available in paperback, The L.M. Montgomery Reader assembles rediscovered primary material on one of Canada’s most enduringly popular authors, spanning the entirety of her high-profile career and the years since her death.
The second volume, A Critical Heritage, narrates the development of L.M. Montgomery’s critical reputation in the years since her death. 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. The 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.
Each volume in The L.M. Montgomery Reader is accompanied by an extensive introduction and detailed commentary by leading Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre that traces the interplay between the author and the critic, as well as between the private and the public Montgomery.
The L.M. Montgomery Reader traces the author’s enduring legacy as a Canadian icon and as a literary celebrity both during and beyond her lifetime.
"Benjamin Lefebvre is a key figure in the field of 'Montgomery studies,' with a keen eye to the 'pop-cult' aspects of Montgomery's reputation and readership. His encyclopaedic knowledge of Montgomery and her works is evident in the knowledgeable and readable introduction, the annotations, and the useful headnotes that contextualize each selection."
—Heather Murray, Department of English, University of Toronto
"The L.M. Montgomery Reader, volume 2, presents a generous selection of material, judiciously chosen and clearly organized. The essays included cover an excellent range of primary texts, critical approaches, and eras."
—Faye Hammill, Professor of English, University of Strathclyde
The book includes the following 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
ISBN: 9781442644922
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Book cover of The L.M. Montgomery Reader: Volume Two: A Critical Heritage.
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Created June 5, 2014. Last updated May 2, 2024.
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