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 first volume, A Life in Print, focuses specifically on Montgomery’s role as a public celebrity and author of the resoundingly successful Anne of Green Gables (1908). The selections give a strong impression of Montgomery as a writer and cultural critic as she discusses a range of topics with wit, wisdom, and humour, including the natural landscape of Prince Edward Island, her wide readership, anxieties about modernity, and the continued relevance of "old ideals." These essays and interviews, joined by a number of additional pieces that discuss her work’s literary and cultural value in relation to an emerging canon of Canadian literature, make up nearly one hundred selections in all.
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.