Category Archives: Anne of Green Gables

The Blythes Are Quoted in The Guardian and Beyond

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An article about The Blythes Are Quoted by Alison Flood appears in today’s The Guardian:

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s last work, featuring surprising experiments with poetry and prose, to be published in full

Penguin Canada is due to publish Lucy Maud Montgomery’s final book in its entirety, casting a new shadow over the author of Anne of Green Gables.

[...]

Despite the darker elements to The Blythes Are Quoted, Penguin is hoping to reach children as well as adults, aiming for the readers who bought Budge Wilson’s prequel to Anne’s story, Before Green Gables, last spring.

This story was subsequently picked up by the Wall Street Journal in today’s Morning Roundup blog:

Anne Returns, Again: Someone who wasn’t afraid of sequels is Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of the “Anne of Green Gables” books. Penguin Canada is going to publish the ninth volume of the series in full. “The Blythes Are Quoted” follows freckle-faced heroine Anne Shirley through the First World War.

This story was then picked up again by The Examiner in an article by Peter Franklin called “A scandalous week“:

Lastly, it was revealed just today that Penguin Canada is set to publish an unabridged version of the final book of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic Anne of Green Gables series. Entitled The Blythes Are Quoted, the novel is said to include “adultery, illegitimacy, misogyny, revenge, murder, despair, bitterness, hatred, and death,” as well as an experimentation with storytelling not seen in the other volumes.

This development adds to the growing pall around Montgomery’s public perception; her granddaughter admitted last year that the children’s author had died of a drug overdose.

However, most shocking here is Penguin’s plan to market The Blythes Are Quoted in all of its murder and misogyny to kids. Alison Flood writes: “Penguin is hoping to reach children as well as adults, aiming for the readers who bought Budge Wilson’s prequel to Anne’s story, Before Green Gables, last spring.”

Reviews of Toronto production of Anne of Green Gables: The Musical

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Several reviews of the Toronto production of Anne of Green Gables: The Musical have appeared online of late. The CBC News story “Toronto reviewers unkind to P.E.I.’s favourite redhead” (15 May 2009) gives a good overview of the response; Kelly Nestruck’s story “We still love you, Anne, but smarten up, will you?” was published in the Globe and Mail a day later, on 16 May.

New Book: 100 Years of Anne with an “e”

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blackford

Announcing the publication of 100 Years of Anne with an “e”: The Centennial Study of “Anne of Green Gables,” a collection of essays edited by Holly Blackford and published by University of Calgary Press. The book contains an introduction by Holly Blackford and chapters by Joy Alexander, Hilary Emmett, Irene Gammel, Monika Hilder, Melissa Mullins, Eleanor Hersey Nickel, Sharyn Pearce, E. Holly Pike, Cornelia Rémi, Laura M. Robinson, Christiana R. Salah, and Theodore Sheckels.

CFP: Special issue of The Lion and the Unicorn on Anne of Green Gables

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The Lion and the Unicorn, a peer-reviewed academic journal about children’s literature published by Johns Hopkins University Press, invites essay submissions for a special issue on L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, guest-edited by Michelle Ann Abate.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• the past place, present status and future importance of Anne in children’s literature
• Anne and (de)construction of gender and girlhood
• the pastoral tradition and literary romanticism in Anne
• Anne and/as adolescent literature
• Anne and Canadian identity, literature, nationalism and culture
• cinematic, theatrical and television adaptations of the Anne story
• Anne in American, British and Canadian popular and material culture
• Anne and/in the evolution of the “girls’ book”
• L.M. Montgomery as Anne author and icon
• Anne as a reflection and/or revision of the orphan story
• female friendship in Anne; the novel as both homosocial and possibly homoerotic/queer
• re-reading Anne in light of recent news about Montgomery’s battle with depression and her death by suicide
• Centenary celebrations of the publication of Anne; Montgomery’s classic at 100

Essays should be 15 – 20 pages (4,500 – 6,000 words) in length. Please send submissions for this special issue electronically as Microsoft Word attachments to Michelle Ann Abate at mabate@hollins.edu.

To facilitate anonymous review, essays should contain no identifying information. Instead, the author’s name, email and postal address should appear in the message that accompanies the submission. Submissions should conform to the Modern Language Association bibliographic style.

See the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7th ed., for procedures regarding in-text citations and Works Cited.

Deadline: June 1st, 2009

Update: Tan Green Gables sells

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The following update to yesterday’s blog entry appears in this morning’s Globe and Mail:

Green Gables first edition sells for more than $8,000 [Globe and Mail, 6 December 2008, R14]

Toronto—A rare first edition of the original 1908 Anne of Green Gables by Canada’s L.M. Montgomery sold at auction in New York yesterday for $8,125 (U.S.), including buyer’s premium. The clothbound edition, offered without the even-rarer dust jacket, went into bidding with a presale estimate of $8,000-$12,000.

What made the Christie’s consignment something of a rarity was its tan cover. Most first editions—it’s believed Montgomery’s Boston-based publisher printed no more than 7,000 copies in spring, 1908—have a green binding. The record for a first-edition Anne sold at auction is $24,000, set by Sotheby’s New York in 2005. That book was consigned by a collector in Victoria. (James Adams)

CBC News: First edition of Anne Up for Auction

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From CBC News:

Christie’s in New York will auction a first edition of Anne of Green Gables on Friday morning.

The 1908 book by L. M. Montgomery, which spawned an entire industry on Prince Edward Island, including Canada’s longest running musical, is described on the auction house’s website as “the property of a lady.”

Several movie versions of the book have also been made.

First editions of Anne are rare. While it eventually became a worldwide phenomenon, published in at least 30 languages, the first run of the book was small.

The edition on sale Friday is described as unusual because it comes in a brown cover. Most of the first editions come in a green cover.

Christie’s expects the book to sell for between $8,000 US and $12,000 US, but in 2005 a green-covered first edition went for $24,000. At the time, that was the fifth first edition to go up for auction in 30 years.

This sale is part of an auction that includes 299 books and manuscripts.

UPDATE: Jason has tracked down the item on Christie’s website.

Updating the Classic

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I just the following article on the CBC.ca website:

Writers challenged to update Wind in the Willows on its 100th birthday

The 100th anniversary of Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows will be celebrated with a competition to write a modern version of the children’s classic.

The River & Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, in Britain has launched a writing competition that challenges authors to put a modern take on Grahame’s themes.

“Kenneth Grahame knew all about the power of the river on the imagination, and on our real lives,” museum representative Paul Mainds told BBC.

“This competition gives authors the opportunity to re-animate these themes and make them more relevant for today’s young readers, especially in light of the environmental issues that now affect our rivers and the wildlife that lives in and around them.”

Writers are challenged to pen a “river-related” short story “for our times.”

The museum, on the river Thames, has a permanent exhibition dedicated to Wind in the Willows.

Grahame’s tale of the adventures of Toad, Mole, Ratty and Badger was published Oct. 8, 1908, four months after he left his job at the Bank of England….

The news of this competition made me wonder about Anne of Green Gables, which was published less than four months before Wind in the Willows. If there were a competition to write a modern version of this novel, how would it be done? What would need to be updated, changed, altered, or reemphasized?

Six books from Sullivan Entertainment

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In anticipation of the CTV broadcast of Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning (an exact date has not yet been released), Sullivan Entertainment will release six books in September and October. A novelization of the new movie, written by Kevin Sullivan, will be published by Key Porter Books on 1 October (Amazon.ca listing here). Also on that day, they are publishing through Davenport Press reissues of Montgomery’s novels Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, and Anne of the Island; an audio CD of Anne of Green Gables, read by Kevin Sullivan; and a new novelization of their first Anne of Green Gables miniseries.

Sullivan Entertainment has also released new trailers of the New Beginning movie, both of which imply that Anne wasn’t really an orphan after all. View them at their official website.

Anne in Japan

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Symian Days has posted two blog posts on Anne of Green Gables in Japan: “Little ‘Red Hair Anne’” and “‘Red Hair Anne’ Strikes Again.” Thanks to Yuka for sending these my way.

Also, I have read reports that the 1979 animation Akage no An, which to the best of my knowledge has never been dubbed into English (correct me if I’m wrong), will be or has been released on DVD in French. I will post again once I receive confirmation and all the ordering details.