L.M. Montgomery Reader: Volume Three

This third and final volume of The L.M. Montgomery Reader examines a long overlooked portion of Montgomery’s 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. Lefebvre’s extended introduction and chapter headnotes place the reviews in the context of Montgomery’s literary career and trace the evolution of attitudes to her work, and his epilogue examines the response to her books, letters, journals, and other writings that were published posthumously.

A comprehensive account of the reception of Montgomery’s books, published during and after her lifetime, A Legacy in Review completes this important new resource for L.M. Montgomery scholars and fans around the world.

BENJAMIN LEFBVRE, PhD, lives in Waterloo, Ontario, and is director of L.M. Montgomery Online. His previous publications include an edition of L.M. Montgomery's rediscovered final book, The Blythes Are Quoted.