Product Description

Lucy Maud Montgomery's scrapbooks from the years 1893 to 1910 provide a revealing look into her life and inspiration during the time she created the beloved character of Anne Shirley while living on Prince Edward Island as a college student, teacher, and writer. In Imagining Anne, over 100 pages of the scrapbooks are fully and beautifully reproduced in colour, and the significance of the souvenirs and clippings Montgomery collected are explained by Elizabeth Rollins Epperly. This beautiful gift book is a must-have for all Montgomery fans, lovers of Canadian history, and scrapbook enthusiasts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #408277 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 176 pages

About the Author
Elizabeth Rollins Epperly is Professor Emerita of the University of Prince Edward Island, founding Chair of the L.M. Montgomery Institute, and serves on the Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority and the International Advisory Board of the LMMI.

Customer Reviews

Too much
I am a huge Lucy Maud Montgomery fan and have read anything I can find on this author. Dr. Epperly, the author of this book is without a doubt a leading authority on LMM. While I appreciate the thought behind this book, I just did not think that it translated all that well to paper.

I thought that by reading this book, I would get into Maud's world - understand her more - be able to live through Maud's view of her life.

This was not the case. While this book is absolutely beautiful to look at, there is too much to look at and some of it is almost impossible to read (especially most of the newspaper clippings which, when transferred from the original lost much of their sharpness).

I think the basic problem is that you open a page and get assaulted by a multitude of colors, words and pictures - there is too much to see and because some of it is so blurry, it is impossible to make any kind of sens out of everything. Yes, Dr. Epperly does attempts to explain some of the contents, but unfortunately, because there is so much on one page, she sometimes skips over some of it, or will give the briefest of explanations. Also, although LMM kept these scrapbooks over the course of her life - surprisingly, there is a note of generality to the scrapbooks, for some reason, I felt as though the contents seem to touch LMM very little in some ways! There was a lack of personal feeling throught the book.

I found this in her Journals as well. It has been documented that LMM, once she got famous, went back to her Journals and removed or amended certain things that she felt may have been too personal - she basically edited her own journals for the general public to see one day! I suspect she may have done this with the scrapbooks - which leaves us with a very frustrating and incomplete picture of LMM (but one that I suspect she wants us to see).

I think this book would have worked better with Dr. Epperly picking a few key items from the scrapbooks and explaining them in more detail - instead of simply reproducing the whole thing and then trying to play catch up.

If you want to buy this because it is a beautiful coffee table book - then do it - however, if you are looking for insight on LMM - skip it.

nice looking book
I bought this book with 100 years anniversary edition of "Anne of Green Gable" for my daugther's birthday gifr.

This book is more like illustational book than readable book. Nice looking and good collection for Fans of Anne. :).

Fast global shipping from Amazon to South Korea. Got it within 10 days. Super!

Imagining L.M. Montgomery
This lovely visual autobiography represents the missing piece in my L.M. Montgomery collection. Entering into the visual imagination of an author as she creates her word pictures allows a window into the creative process I've never before had the pleasure of experiencing. Now that scrapbooking has once again surfaced as a popular art form, the reader can identify in a way previously absent from critical work on Montgomery.

Montgomery's creativitiy was not limited to the written text. Her photographs, brilliantly referenced by Elizabeth Epperly in Through Lover's Lane: L.M. Montgomery's Photography and Visual Imagination, represent only a fraction of Montgomery's vivid mind at work. Now, with the publication of these painstakingly assembled scrapbooks, Epperly supplies valuable previously missing links in Montgomery's life, allowing the reader full entry into the creative journey of this strikingly visual writer. The scrapbooks are joyous, a fitting complement to previous often painful events recorded in the journals, and in her most recent biography.

I stayed up all night reading this book, and imagining Montgomery cutting, compiling, collaging her memories. Epperly's text beautifully elucidates the images, while allowing her readers the freedom to imagine their own layered version of Montgomery's life and times