L.M. Montgomery Research Group

A recent “Industry News” column by Zoe Whittall appeared recently on the Quill & Quire website:

Penguin Canada has a number of foreign deals to report: … Hindi rights to the 100th Anniversary Edition of Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery went to Penguin Books India; Shinchosha have acquired Japanese rights to The Blythes Are Quoted by L.M. Montgomery….

Also, Kerry Clare’s review of L.M. Montgomery by Jane Urquhart and The Blythes Are Quoted is now available on the Q&Q website.

The publication of The Blythes Are Quoted has been selected as one of the “10 biggest publishing stories of 2009″ on a CBC.ca news story:

Fans of the precocious, freckle-faced redhead from P.E.I. had reason to rejoice this year when an amended version of the final Anne Shirley stories was released under a new title, The Blythes Are Quoted. But the book’s additional 100 pages revealed a darker story – complete with references to adultery and suicide. Novelist Jane Urquhart ably provided a context for these bleak scenes in her comprehensive, unflinching biography of Anne’s author, Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne’s banner year ended with a triumphant Sotheby’s auction – proof that great CanLit never goes out of fashion.

See “The Year in Books” for the full story.

I will be interviewed on Ontario Today on Monday, 14 December 2009, sometime between 12:00 and 12:30, on CBC Radio One:

L.M. Montgomery’s last manuscript, The Blythes are Quoted, has just been published for the first time in its entirety. The manuscript was submitted to Montgomery’s publisher the day she died. It’s the ninth volume in the Anne series. The editor who re-discovered the typescript will be our guest on Ontario Today. And of course Ed Lawrence will join us as well.

UPDATED 15 DECEMBER 2009: The interview can be streamed from the Ontario Today website for the next thirty days.

To follow up on my earlier article “First-edition Anne Expected to Set Auction Record“: James Adams reports in today’s Globe and Mail that this copy sold at auction for $37,500:

A first-edition copy of the Canadian classic Anne of Green Gables was sold by Sotheby’s New York Friday afternoon for $37,500 (U.S.) – a live auction record for the famous debut novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery that originally retailed for $1.50.

Read the rest of the article here.

See also “Anne 1st-edition nets record $30K US at auction” on CBC News.

An article titled “A new job for Anne of Green Gables: selling beef to Japan” appeared in Tuesday’s Globe and Mail:

Enterprising farmers on Prince Edward Island are hoping to crack Japan’s stiffly competitive Wagyu beef market by using the lure of Anne Shirley, a revered figure to generations of Japanese women—the ones who decide what is served at weddings.

Read the rest of the article here.

I’ll be signing copies of The Blythes Are Quoted at the Lucy Maud Montgomery Museum located at Crawford’s Village Bakeshop in Norval, Ontario, on 12 December 2009 from 1:30 to 3:30 PM (more info), and also at the Kitchener Public Library in Kitchener, Ontario, on 16 December 2009 beginning at 6:30 PM (more info).

The second season of the television series Emily of New Moon will be released on DVD by Echo Bridge Home Entertainment on 29 December 2009! These thirteen episodes first aired on CBC more than ten years ago, from October 1998 to January 1999, and were filmed entirely on Prince Edward Island.

Included in the DVD set are all second-season episodes:

• 2.1/14: Summer of Sorrows
• 2.2/15: And So Shall They Reap
• 2.3/16: A Shadow in His Dream
• 2.4/17: Where Angels Fear To Tread
• 2.5/18: The Witches’ Spell Book
• 2.6/19: Rivers of Babylon
• 2.7/20: A Time to Heal
• 2.8/21: The Devil’s Punchbowl
• 2.9/22: Pins and Needles, Needles and Pins, When a Man Gets Married, His Trouble Begins
• 2.10/23: Crown of Thorns
• 2.11/24: When the Bough Breaks
• 2.12/25: Love Knots
• 2.13/26: The Book of Hours

See also the listing at Echo Bridge Home Entertainment’s website.

A news story by Randy Boswell has appeared in a number of newspapers across Canada yesterday and today.

One of the books most coveted by collectors of Canadian literary history — a first edition copy of Anne of Green Gables — is to be sold at auction next week in New York for what could be a record price.

The vintage edition of the classic novel by P.E.I.-born author Lucy Maud Montgomery, first printed in April 1908 by the Boston publishing house L.C. Page, is expected to fetch up to $25,000 U.S. at Sotheby’s Dec. 11 sale of rare books and manuscripts.

A top hammer price would just surpass the $24,000 record set in 2005 for another inaugural copy of the famous work.

Read more here.

The following notice appears on the website of the L.M. Montgomery Institute, concerning Frank and Juanita Lechowick’s new book, A Collector’s Guide to L.M. Montgomery Firsts:

In the course of research in libraries and used book stores from Charlottetown to Victoria, the authors have discovered the points of Montgomery’s original editions, from Anne of Green Gables (1908) to Anne of Ingleside (1939). A Collector’s Guide to L.M. Montgomery Firsts presents their findings systematically, with photographs and descriptions of each of the 39 first editions.

Two reviews appear in today’s Globe and Mail: Aritha van Herk’s “Blythe Spirits,” a review of The Blythes Are Quoted, and Irene Gammel’s “The Daughters of Lucy Maud,” a review of Jane Urquhart’s L.M. Montgomery.