The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 2: A Critical Heritage

by Benjamin Lefebvre

Now available in paperback, The L.M. Montgomery Reader assembles rediscovered primary material on one of Canada's most enduringly popular authors, spanning the entirety of her high-profile career and the years since her death.

The second volume, A Critical Heritage, narrates the development of L.M. Montgomery's critical reputation in the years since her death. It traces milestones and turning points such as adaptations for stage and screen, posthumous publications, and the development of Montgomery Studies as a scholarly field. The introduction also considers Montgomery's publishing history in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom at a time when her work remained in print not because it was considered part of a university canon of literature, but simply due to the continued interest of readers.

Each volume in The L.M. Montgomery Reader is accompanied by an extensive introduction and detailed commentary by leading Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre that traces the interplay between the author and the critic, as well as between the private and the public Montgomery.

451 pages, Hardcover

First published March 30, 2014

About the author

Benjamin Lefebvre is the author of the novel In the Key of Dale (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022), which was also published in Italian in 2023. His edited books include the three-volume critical anthology The L.M. Montgomery Reader (UTP, 2013–15), which won the 2016 PROSE Award for Literature from the Association of American Publishers, and an edition of L.M. Montgomery's rediscovered final book, The Blythes Are Quoted (Penguin Canada, 2009), which has since appeared in Polish, Finnish, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Italian and which was republished as part of Penguin Canada Modern Classics in July 2018. He also prepared and introduced the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Anne of Green Gables (2017).
He is also editor of The L.M. Montgomery Library, a series of books that collect Montgomery's extensive publications in the areas of short fiction, poetry, and miscellaneous pieces. A Name for Herself: Selected Writings, 1891–1917, A World of Songs: Selected Poems, 1894–1921, and Twice upon a Time: Selected Stories, 1898–1939 are already available, and several more volumes are in progress.