"The L.M. Montgomery Reader assembles significant rediscovered primary material on one of Canadas most enduringly popular authors throughout her high-profile career and after her death. Each of its three volumes gathers pieces published all over the world to set the stage for a much-needed reassessment of Montgomerys literary reputation. Much of the material is freshly unearthed from archives and digital collections and has never before been published in book form. The selections appearing in this first volume focus on Montgomerys role as a public celebrity and author of the resoundingly successful Anne of Green Gables (1908). They give a strong impression of her 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 works literary and cultural value in relation to an emerging canon of Canadian literature, make up nearly one hundred selections in all.

Each volume is accompanied by an extensive introduction and detailed commentary by leading Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre that trace the interplay between the author and the critic, as well as between the private and the public Montgomery. This volume - and the Reader as a whole - adds tremendously to our understanding and appreciation of Montgomerys legacy as a Canadian author and as a literary celebrity both during and beyond her lifetime."--"Following on the heels of the first volume of The L.M. Montgomery Reader, this second volume narrates the development of L.M. Montgomerys (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.

Lefebvres introduction also considers Montgomerys 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 Montgomerys archival papers. They reflect shifts in Montgomerys 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 Montgomerys 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 Canadas most enduringly popular authors."--"The final volume of The L.M. Montgomery Reader, A Legacy in Review examines a long overlooked portion of Montgomerys critical reception: reviews of her books. Although Montgomery downplayed the impact that reviews had on her writing career, claiming to be amused and tolerant of reviewers contradictory opinions about her work, she nevertheless cared enough to keep a large percentage of them in scrapbooks as an archive of her career.

Edited by leading Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre, this volume presents more than four hundred reviews from eight countries that raise questions about and offer reflections on gender, genre, setting, character, audience, and nationalism, much of which anticipated the scholarship that has thrived in the last four decades. Lefebvres extended introduction and chapter headnotes place the reviews in the context of Montgomerys literary career and trace the evolution of attitudes to her work, and his epilogue examines the reception of Montgomerys books that were published posthumously. A comprehensive account of the reception of Montgomerys books, published during and after her lifetime, A Legacy in Review is the illuminating final volume of this important new resource for L.M. Montgomery scholars and fans around the world."--.