| In The Blythes Are Quoted, a manuscript completed likely within the last two years of L. M. Montgomery's life with the aim of expanding her bestselling Anne of Green Gables series, Montgomery chooses to broach such social concerns as adultery, illegitimacy, hatred, spousal abuse, revenge, melancholia, misogyny, murder, aging, and death. These "adult" themes do not resonate as typical for her body of work, yet because her strategy differs from the larger themes of Canadian modernism, her text eludes pressures of categorization. This thesis involved creating a corrected, annotated, and publishable copy of this manuscript based on two original typescripts housed at the University of Guelph archives; the textual editing of these manuscripts is coupled with a detailed critical introduction, textual notes, and exhaustive archival bibliographies, all of which help place the text within its historical, biographical, and critical contexts. |
