Jane Ledwell - Anne Around the World: L.M. Montgomery and Her Classic

Anne around the World

L.M. MONTGOMERY AND HER CLASSIC

Edited by Jane Ledwell and Jean Mitchell

McGill-Queens University Press
Montreal & Kingston London Ithaca

McGill-Queens University Press 2013

Uncertainties Surrounding the Death of L.M. Montgomery

Mary Henley Rubio

ISBN 978-0-7735-4139-9 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-7735-4140-5 (paper)

ISBN 978-0-7735-8858-5 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-0-7735-8859-2 (ePUB)

Legal deposit second quarter 2013

Bibliothque nationale du Qubec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

McGill-Queens University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Anne around the world : L.M. Montgomery and her classic / edited by Jane Ledwell and Jean Mitchell.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7735-4139-9 (bound). ISBN 978-0-7735-4140-5 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-0-7735-8858-5 (PDF). ISBN 978-0-7735-8859-2 (EPUB)

1. Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud), 18741942. Anne of Green Gables. 2. Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud), 18741942 Criticism and interpretation. 3. Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud), 18741942 Influence. I. Ledwell, Jane, 1972 II. Mitchell, Jean, 1953

PS8526.O55Z5193 2013 C813.52 C2013-900094-1

Set in 10.4/13.5 Warnock Pro with Nexa

Book design & typesetting by Garet Markvoort, zijn digital

JANE LEDWELL AND JEAN MITCHELL

ELIZABETH HILLMAN WATERSTON

ELIZABETH R. EPPERLY

MARY HENLEY RUBIO

BARBARA CARMAN GARNER

MARGARET DOODY

PAUL KEEN

CYNTHIA SUGARS

WENDY SHILTON

CAROLINE E. JONES

JEAN MITCHELL

BROOKE COLLINS-GEARING

GHOLAMREZA SAMIGORGANROODI

DORELEY CAROLINA COLL

TANFER EMIN TUNC

YOSHIKO AKAMATSU

SA WARNQVIST

JENNIE MACDONALD

SUSAN MEYER

BUDGE WILSON

The origin of this collection of essays was the Eighth Biennial International L.M. Montgomery Conference, held in 2008 by the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada. The conference, L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables and the Idea of Classic, inspired a variety of fascinating investigations, and the scholarly discussion continued after the conference. This volume includes papers based on presentations to the conference and is amplified with specially requested and selected submissions that follow upon and extend the discussion. We acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for its support of the conference and thank the eminent conference co-chairs Elizabeth Epperly, Mary Rubio, and Elizabeth Waterston, as well as conference organizer, Elizabeth DeBlois.

We are grateful for assistance in preparing this volume. Dolores Le-Vangie was a dedicated partner at every stage of its preparation; we could not have done it without her. Suna Houghton was a perceptive and encouraging reader. Wendy Henderson was an unflagging technical support. We are also grateful to fellow members of the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island, especially Mark Leggott and Simon Lloyd, and other colleagues at the University of Prince Edward Island and the PEI Advisory Council on the Status of Women.

Material written by L.M. Montgomery is excerpted with the permission of Heirs of L.M. Montgomery Inc. Excerpts from The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volumes I, II, III, and IV (copyright 1985, 1987, 1992, and 1998, University of Guelph), edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, and published by Oxford University Press, Canada, are reproduced with the permission of Mary Rubio, Elizabeth Waterston, and the University of Guelph, courtesy of the L.M. Montgomery Collection, Archival and Special Collections, University of Guelph Library. The manuscript of Anne of Green Gables is excerpted courtesy of the Confederation Centre of the Arts, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon, The Story Girl, and The Blue Castle are trademarks of Heirs of L.M. Montgomery Inc. and are used with permission. Anne of Green Gables and other indicia of Anne are trademarks and/or Canadian official marks of the Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority Inc. and are used with permission. We are particularly grateful to Sally Keefe Cohen for help in obtaining permission to use this material.

The lengthy preparation of this volume was punctuated by births and critical illnesses. We are thankful for support from the team at McGill-Queens University Press, particularly from the erudite and gentlemanly Mr Mark Abley and from perspicacious editor Jane McWhinney. We are grateful to the contributors for their steadfast commitment to seeing the volume into print and, most of all, to our families for their love and support, with special thanks to Jim Rodd, Marian Mitchell, Stephen MacInnis, and Anna and Samuel Ledwell MacInnis.

We dedicate this volume to Melanie Dale Scott and the memory of Patti MacKenna.

Anne around the World

JANE LEDWELL AND JEAN MITCHELL

More than a hundred years ago, a curious and often lonely young woman from the north shore of Prince Edward Island published her first novel, Anne of Green Gables. It became the first Canadian international best-seller and has now sold over fifty million copies and been translated into more than thirty languages and numerous media, including illustrations, silent film, film series, animated series, plays, musical plays, heritage sites, and Web sites. This book has powerfully influenced generations of readers and helped shape the identities not only of Montgomerys readers around the world but also of her beloved Prince Edward Island and the fictional worlds of childhood.

Lucy Maud Montgomerys childhood was not unusual; nor was it typical. She had lost her mother to tuberculosis and her father to migration west, and was raised by her grandparents and other relatives. When she wrote the story of Anne, she was unmarried and had no children. She lived on a handsome but small island on the eastern coast of a still-new country whose society and traditions were mostly unaccounted for; and yet these were entirely a part of the colonial, imperial projects of global politics. Neither was the Anne character that Montgomery imagined a typical child an eleven-year-old orphan who survived many tragedies and yet remained hopeful, a child unaccountably odd and remarkable, and yet a clear manifestation of literary tropes and imaginative flights of romance.

It seemed unlikely that this author and this heroine, who on the surface seemed to yoke the ordinary with the conventional, would find a place in print, let alone a lasting place on the bookshelves of several generations in many locales around the globe. And yet readers of different ages and eras and diverse cultures have read beyond literary conventions and the conventionalities of literary genre, style, and culture. In the character and experience of Anne Shirley, readers have discovered experiences they relate to, identify with, and are moved by. This girl-child heroine, born of L.M. Montgomerys imagination and inflected with aspects of her experience, has been adopted as an icon of childhood across time and across cultures.