Across the Miles: Tales of Correspondence
5. Across the Miles: Tales of Correspondence by L.M. Montgomery, edited by Rea Wilmshurst (Fiction, Short Story Collection)
Twenty stories by the author of Anne of Green Gables, all turning on the theme of letter-writing. Very much in the same style as the rest of Montgomery’s writing; if you like her other work, you’ll like these stories. Nice, undemanding reading for a quiet Saturday afternoon.
The most interesting thing about this book (and the other L.M. Montgomery short story collection edited by Rea Wilmshurst) is how they came about. She tells the story in an afterword: while on vacation in Prince Edward Island, she and a friend stopped at Montgomery’s birthplace in New London. There was a scrapbook on display which contained stories which Wilmshurst, a longtime Montgomery fan, had never read or even heard of. Further research showed that there were over 500 L.M. Montgomery stories which had only been published in small Canadian magazines, newspapers, and Sunday School newsletters. Many of these were long ago discontinued, and the stories themselves were unknown to the public. Eventually, Wilmshurst approached McClelland & Stewart, who published many of the stories in half-a-dozen or so thematically related collections.
I love the old-fashioned coziness of Montgomery’s stories; reading one of her books is like stepping into another world.
Books read: 5/50
Pages read: 1,445/15,000
X-posted to here.
