Harvesting Thistles: The Textual Garden of L.M. Montgomery, Essays on Her Novels and Journals (1994)
Edited by Mary Henley Rubio
Guelph, ON: Canadian Children’s Press, 1994
Synopsis
This collection of essays calls for new interpretative strategies in reading the texts of Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942), author of Anne of Green Gables (1908). Long overlooked in academic critical discourse as a writer of popular and children’s fiction, Montgomery is reread here in the light of gender and cultural studies, as well as of autobiographical theory. The first section of essays places Montgomery and her texts (including her journals) in a literary and cultural context; the second section focuses on selected individual novels. In these essays by an international group of scholars from the United Kingdom, the USA, Scandinavia, and Canada, Montgomery is established as an immensely influential writer who has gained and maintained a world-wide readership throughout the twentieth century.
A best-selling writer in her native Canada and throughout the world, Montgomery published some 20 books, over 500 short stories and over 500 poems during her lifetime. At her death she left 10 volumes of unpublished 500-page journals, covering the years from 1889-1942, whose recent publication has added immensely to our understanding of the interior life of a woman of her era.
Contents
Acknowledgements (v)
List of Illustrations (vi)
Contributors (ix-xi)
Part 1: Contexts
Introduction: Harvesting Thistles in Montgomery’s Textual Garden / Mary Henley Rubio (1-13)
“Mayflowers grow in Sweden too”: L.M. Montgomery, Astrid Lindgren and the Swedish Literary Consciousness / Gabriella Åhmansson (14-22)
Readers Reading L.M. Montgomery / Catherine Sheldrick Ross (23-35)
Sisterhood is Fearful: Female Friendship in L.M. Montgomery / Temma F. Berg (36-49)
The Heroine Who Writes and Her Creator / E. Holly Pike (50-57)
Anne Shirley’s American Cousin: The Girl of the Limberlost / Clara Thomas (58-63)
Written as Women Write: Anne of Green Gables within the Female Literary Tradition / Patricia Kelly Santelmann (64-73)
Approaching the Montgomery Manuscripts / Elizabeth R. Epperly (74-83)
The Religious Thought of L.M. Montgomery / Gavin White (84-88)
A Note on Montgomery’s Use of a “Contemporary Legend” in Emily Climbs / Edith Fowke (89-92)
“I mean to try, as far as in me lies, to paint my life and deeds truthfully”: Autobiographical Process in the L.M. Montgomery Journals / Margaret E. Turner (93-100)
Snapshot Portraits: Finding L.M. Montgomery in Her “Dear Den” / Laura Higgins (101-112)
Negotiating Friendships: The Reading and Writing of L.M. Montgomery / Denyse Yeast (113-125)
Part 2: Texts
L.M. Montgomery’s Rilla of Ingleside: Intention, Inclusion, Implosion / Owen Dudley Edwards (126-136)
Wedding Bells and Death Knells: The Writer as Bride in the Emily Trilogy / Marie Campbell (137-145)
Textual/Sexual Space in The Blue Castle: Valancy Stirling’s “Room of Her Own” / Gabriella Åhmansson (146-154)
Marigold and the Magic of Memory / Elizabeth Waterston (155-166)
“Strewn with Dead Bodies”: Women and Gossip in Anne of Ingleside / Jennie Rubio (167-177)
Index (178-185)
Reviews
Dudar, Judy. “Reconsiderations.” Review of Harvesting Thistles: The Textual Garden of L.M. Montgomery, Essays on Her Novels and Journals, ed. Mary Henley Rubio; Sexualizing Power in Naturalism: Theodore Dreiser and Frederick Philip Grove, by Irene Gammel. Canadian Literature 151 (Winter 1996): 133-35.
Garner, Barbara Carmen. “Roads to Yesterday: New Readings of L.M. Montgomery.” Review of The Annotated Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery, edited by Wendy E. Barry, Margaret Anne Doody, and Mary E. Doody Jones; Children’s Voices in Atlantic Literature and Culture: Essays on Childhood, edited by Hilary Thompson; Harvesting Thistles: The Textual Garden of L.M. Montgomery, Essays on Her Novels and Journals, edited by Mary Henley Rubio; Writing a Life: L.M. Montgomery, by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston; Kindling Spirit: L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, by Elizabeth Waterston. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 24, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 50-2.
Phillips, Anne K. “Additional ‘Variations’: Further Developments in Feminist Theory and Children’s Literature.” Review of Harvesting Thistles: the Textual Garden of L.M. Montgomery, Essays on Her Novels and Journals, edited by Mary Henley Rubio; Nancy Drew and Company: Culture, Gender, and Girls’ Series, edited by Sherrie A. Inness; Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children’s Novels, by Roberta Seelinger Trites. Children’s Literature 27 (1999): 223-32.
