Lucy Maud Montgomery: A Preliminary Bibliography

Ellen Pilon is a library assistant in the Patrick Power Library at Saint
Mary’s University in Halifax.

Most of the previous titles in this bibliography series are catalogues or guides to parts of the University of Waterloo library collections. Subtitled “a preliminary bibliography,” this work would be comprehensive except that a 500-page scrapbook of reviews of Montgomery’s work, compiled by her, will not be available to researchers until 1992 or later. Presumably once this information is available, the bibliography will be complete.

Three librarians have unmistakably written this book; no one else would ever record information in such detail. The 175 pages are supersaturated. Over two pages of acknowledgements in small print must mention every single contact made in gathering material. The table of contents extends more than three pages; with judicious editing of superfluous entries it could easily be condensed to a much clearer, concise two pages. The index is first rate, as one would expect. The introduction is especially long-winded, explaining the organization of each part of the book in painstaking detail.

An interesting publishing history of Montgomery’s work is included. The authors obviously take great pride in the number of translations of Montgomery’s novels they have unearthed, and in the variety of foreign libraries they have contacted to verify these translations. It is indeed interesting to read which of Montgomery’s novels have been translated into what languages and to speculate why. Her novels have not been popular in French at all: only Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon have been translated into French. Almost everything she wrote has been translated into Japanese, and most of her novels into Dutch, Finnish, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, and Swedish. Part 1, entitled “Novels by Lucy Maud Montgomery,” lists editions in English and translations for each title; part 2 lists other books by Lucy Maud Montgomery; part 3 covers adaptations for other media; part 4 presents stories, poems, miscellaneous pieces, and selected anthologized works; part 5 documents Archival Holdings; part 6 concludes with works on Lucy Maud Montgomery. This work would be invaluable for any serious study of Lucy Maud Montgomery.