The L. M. Montgomery Reader. Volume 1: A Life in Print ed. by Benjamin Lefebvre, and: The L. M. Montgomery Reader. Volume 2: A Critical Heritage ed. by Benjamin Lefebvre, and: The L. M. Montgomery Reader. Volume 3: A Legacy in Review ed. by Benjamin Lefebvre (review)

The introduction to the first volume of The L. M. Montgomery Reader recounts the commonly accepted “genesis story” of Montgomery studies (1: 3). The story goes that, while Montgomery’s works were incredibly popular upon publication, serious scholarship overlooked or actively denigrated them throughout the middle of the twentieth century. In 1985, the first volume of The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery, edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, was published, and the familiar Sullivan Entertainment Anne of Green Gables miniseries was released. The journals marked a shift in academic attention, and the miniseries marked a popular reappraisal of her work. Momentum built on both fronts, and the centenary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables in 2008 was celebrated with new scholarly assessments and publications. Since then, scholars “working from all over the world, continue to find new ways to study this body of work—in terms of empire and nation, sexuality and repression, performance and resistance, parody and allusion, space and place, memory and forgetting, nature and culture, authorship and legislation, and national and international appeal and reception” (1: 4). In this new atmosphere, Montgomery studies has grown and integrated new perspectives, but has also inspired rediscovery and republication of texts previously only available in archives, library repositories, and private collections. Enter the Reader project. Lefebvre’s ambitious and exhaustive series seeks to uncover and reevaluate the “surprisingly vast array of additional materials that originated beyond the walls of the ivory tower” (1: 4), and recontextualize some of the most representative essays in Montgomery studies. Thus the three volumes of the Reader serve as both a thorough resource for serious Montgomery scholars and a fascinating case study of the ways popular media influence literary legacy. The first volume of the Reader, entitled A Life in Print, collects essays by and interviews with the author published in her lifetime. Volume 2: A Critical Heritage includes twenty essays from a variety of academic perspectives published between 1966 and 2012. Volume 3: A Legacy in Review includes 370 reviews, only a representative sample, of Montgomery’s novels and a thorough discussion of her later writings. Each volume offers Lefebvre’s incisive critical voice in its introduction and each entry is presented with a useful headnote. Lefebvre’s judicious editing helps make each entry readable and, together with the contextual framework provided, clearly useful to those interested in Montgomery and media culture. As Lefebvre himself notes, the well of new or “rediscovered” Montgomery material seems never to run dry, making well-framed collections like this one even more useful.

A Life in Print begins with a comprehensive and contextualizing introduction to the Reader that explores both Lefebvre’s methods and the sweep of Montgomery’s career. For those new to the author, this introduction is an invaluable review of the literature and invitation to the conversation. The volume itself includes ninety-one pieces, either interviews with or essays written by Montgomery. Lefebvre notes that “As evidence of a more public Montgomery, these pieces complement and complicate the poetics of self-representation that scholars have traced in past published sources” and author profiles throughout the century (1: 5). Lefebvre also points out that “some of the most revealing details about Montgomery’s strategies and methods as a writer are found in the essays, letters, and interviews published in her lifetime” (1: 8). In essence, this volume attempts to trace “L. M. Montgomery,” author and craftsperson, rather than the “Maud” of the journals, or the “Reverend...