The Blythes Are Quoted on CBC’s “Year in Books”

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.

Interview on CBC Radio’s Ontario Today

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.

Norval and Kitchener

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 Blythes Are Quoted Reviewed in The Globe and Mail

Aritha van Herk’s review of L.M. Montgomery’s The Blythes Are Quoted, titled “Blythe Spirits,” appeared in last Saturday’s Globe and Mail.

The Blythes Are Quoted Now Available

I’m pleased to announce that my edition of L.M. Montgomery’s rediscovered last book, The Blythes Are Quoted, is now available from Viking Canada.

UPDATED 24 OCTOBER: For more on this book, see the following links:

“Waterloo-based academic finds L.M. Montgomery’s last ‘darker’ work” (Kitchener-Waterloo Record, 24 October 2009)

“A different Anne and Gilbert” (The Globe and Mail, 23 October 2009)

“Green Gables tale darkens in final book” (CBC News, 23 October 2009)

UPDATED 26 OCTOBER: See also my essay “The Dark Side of L.M. Montgomery,” published in The Mark.

The short story “Some Fools and a Saint” is now available for download from Penguin Canada’s website.

UPDATED 20 NOVEMBER: “The Dark Side of L.M. Montgomery” now includes a podcast of me reading extracts from Anne of Windy Willows.