Marilla Before Anne

Marilla Before Anne by Louise Michalos was published in May 2021 by Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press. This work of historical fiction extends the world of Anne of Green Gables to tell the story of Marilla Cuthbert's early life. What was Marilla like before Anne Shirley entered the picture?

Louise Michalos set out to answer this question in her own way. Michalos was born in Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia and raised in Halifax. Her mother was raised in a lighthouse, and her father, like L.M. Montgomery, was raised in a house that served as the local post office. She has knowledge and awareness of the community ties in the Maritimes, and wanted to explore Marilla's backstory with an authentic voice.

Here is the description of the book from Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press:

A heart-rending work of historical fiction telling the story of Marilla Cuthbert, long before Anne came to Green Gables farm.

Marilla Cuthbert was fifty-two years old when the plucky red-headed Anne Shirley came to live with her and her brother, Matthew, at Green Gables farm on Prince Edward Island. A seemingly cold and dour spinster, her heart eventually softens to the loveable orphan girl. But for over a century readers have wondered, who was Marilla before Anne?

In Louise Michalos’s remarkable debut novel, readers are introduced to a spirited eighteen-year-old Marilla Cuthbert—a girl not unlike Anne herself—who is desperately in love, and whose whole life is spread before her. But when a moment of defiance brings life-changing consequences, a new Marilla begins to take shape, one who would learn to bear tragedy like a birthright, and loss as an inevitability, and who would hold steadfast to the secrets that could shatter the lives of everyone around her.

Weaving its way from Marilla’s early life in Avonlea to her coming-of-age in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and back, Marilla Before Anne is the story readers of Anne of Green Gables have longed for. Told with a refreshingly original East Coast voice, this exquisite, heartbreaking work of historical fiction takes readers on a journey back in time, to the Green Gables where Marilla Cuthbert lived, loved, and learned, long before Anne.

Reviews

"Beloved characters live in our minds. For those who think they know Marilla Cuthbert, Louise Michalos creates a heart-rending and imaginative fantasy of who our Marilla might have been."
—Lesley Crewe, author of The Spoon Stealer

"Taking us back to Marilla's passionate youth, this book is part old-style romance, part history, with complicated heroes, heroines, and villains. It plays fast and loose with the Marilla and Matthew who may already live inside readers' heads―those willing to take that leap are in for a galloping ride."
—Liz Rosenberg, author of House of Dreams: A Biography of L. M. Montgomery

Image credit:
Book cover of Marilla Before Anne.

Reference:
Author spotlight: Louise Michalos. Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. Retrieved from: https://writers.ns.ca/author-spotlights/author-spotlight-louise-michalos/.

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Created June 10, 2021. Last updated October 23, 2024.
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Anne’s Cradle: The Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka, Japanese Translator of Anne of Green Gables

Anne’s Cradle: The Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka, Japanese Translator of Anne of Green Gables is a biography of the celebrated writer who translated Anne of Green Gables to Japanese for the first time. Eri Muraoka wrote this biography of her grandmother, entitled An no Yurikago Muraoka Hanako no Shogai, which was published in Japanese in 2008. In 2014, the biography became the subject of a popular six-month television series on NHK, Japan's public television station. In 2021, Hanako Muraoka's biography was translated to English by Cathy Hirano and published as Anne's Cradle.

The biography tells the story of Hanako Muraoka's compelling life and work, and it describes the dangers she faced in bringing L.M. Montgomery's novel Anne of Green Gables to Japanese readers.

Here is the description of the book from Nimbus Publishing:

The bestselling biography of renowned Japanese translator of Anne of Green Gables is available in English for the first time. The name Hanako Muraoka is revered in Japan. Her Japanese translation of L. M. Montgomery’s beloved children’s classic Anne of Green Gables, Akage no An (Redhaired Anne) was the catalyst for the book’s massive and enduring popularity in Japan. A book that has since spawned countless interpretations, from manga to a long-running television series, and has remained on Japanese curriculum for half a century. For the first time, the bestselling biography of Hanako Muraoka written by her granddaughter, Eri Muraoka, and translated by the award-winning Cathy Hirano (The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up), is available in English.

Born into an impoverished family of tea merchants in rural Japan at the end of the nineteenth century, Hanako Muraoka’s fortunes change dramatically when she is offered a place at an illustrious girls’ school in Tokyo founded by the Methodist Church of Canada. Nurtured by the Canadian missionaries who teach her, she falls in love with English poetry and literature. This love of the written word develops into a passion for writing and translating children’s literature that sustains Hanako through devastating personal tragedies and the tumult of the twentieth century.

In 1941, after Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Hanako abruptly resigns from her role of reading children’s news over the radio — for which she is known and loved throughout Japan as “Radio Auntie”. Branded as “enemies”, the peace-loving missionaries who nurtured Hanako in her youth and with whom she later worked have been forced to leave the country. But Hanako finds solace in a gift received from a Canadian friend: a copy of L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.

Although it is a book from an “enemy nation”, the story of Anne Shirley brings back vivid memories of precious friends in distant lands, giving Hanako courage and hope for the future. Amidst the wail of air-raid sirens, she begins translating her copy into Japanese in 1943, fully aware that she risks imprisonment and even death if caught. Although she completes the majority of the work by the end of the war, it is only much later that a publisher decides to take a chance on a Canadian author previously unknown in Japan, unwittingly launching a cross-cultural literary legacy that continues to this day.

Anne’s Cradle tells the complex and captivating story of a woman who risked her freedom and devoted her life to bringing quality children’s literature to her people during a period of tumultuous change in Japan. Through the gift of Hanako Muraoka’s translations, generations of Japanese readers have fallen in love with a plucky redhead from Prince Edward Island.

ISBN-13: 9781771089241

Image credit:
Book cover of Anne’s Cradle: The Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka, Japanese Translator of Anne of Green Gables.

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Created June 8, 2021. Last updated November 18, 2024.
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If it had not rained on a certain May morning...

"If it had not rained on a certain May morning Valancy Stirling’s whole life would have been entirely different."
-L.M. Montgomery
The Blue Castle

Read more quotes by L.M. Montgomery.

Image credit:
Illustration of a woman with an umbrella adapted from a United States Rubber Company advertisement in The Ladies' Home Journal (January 1921). Public Domain.

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Created May 16, 2021. Last updated May 16, 2024.
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Anne of Green Gables x Ullala Pajamas Special Collaboration

I came across this fun collaboration between Nippon Animation's Anne of Green Gables with Ullala Pajamas. Ullala Pajamas makes old-fashioned, girlish chemises, night dresses, and pajama sets, and they designed a special set of clothes inspired by Anne of Green Gables.

I love all the product shots. Don't you?

They also remind me of the outfits from Dickinson, the Apple TV+ streaming series on Emily Dickinson starring Hailee Steinfeld. I love the fashion from the Dickinson time period too.

You can shop for outfits from the Anne of Green Gables x Ullala Pajamas collaboration below:

Most of the outfits above sold out now, but there are more cute pajamas currently available at Ullala's Amazon store.

Created March 29, 2021. Last updated June 16, 2024.
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Gilbert Blythe and Anne Shirley Silhouette Prints by Sealhouette

How lovely is this set of silhouette prints of Gilbert Blythe and Anne Shirley? They're by Sealhouette and available on Etsy. Along with the version shown above with Anne and Gilbert's names, there are versions available with quotes by the two characters. Check out the artist's store for more beautiful silhouette prints from literature, TV, and film.

Created March 26, 2021.
© worldofanneshirley.com

She was sitting there...

"She was sitting there waiting for something or somebody and, since sitting and waiting was the only thing to do just then, she sat and waited with all her might and main."
-L.M. Montgomery
Anne of Green Gables

Read more quotes by L.M. Montgomery.

Image credit:
Anne of Green Gables image © Sullivan Entertainment

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Created March 25, 2021. Last updated May 16, 2024.
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L.M. Montgomery's Poetry

L.M. Montgomery is better known for her novels than her poetry though she published approximately 500 poems during her lifetime. In 1916, Montgomery published a volume of poetry entitled The Watchman and Other Poems. The majority of L.M. Montgomery's poems are devoted to nature, particularly the landscape of Prince Edward Island, and rural life on the sea shore. Montgomery's love of poetry is reflected in many of her novels where characters quote poetry or recite poems and ballads. Just one example is Anne Shirley reciting and reenacting Alfred Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" in Anne of Green Gables.

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Created February 16, 2002. Last updated March 25, 2021.
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Who is L.M. Montgomery?

Lucy Maud Montgomery was born in Clifton, Prince Edward Island, Canada on November 30, 1874. During her lifetime, L.M. Montgomery wrote 20 novels, over 500 short stories, one book of poetry, an autobiography, a life's worth of journals, approximately 500 poems, and a nonfiction book called Courageous Women. Of her work, L.M. Montgomery is best known for writing the novel Anne of Green Gables and giving the world the beloved literary character Anne Shirley, an imaginative, intelligent, loving, red-haired orphan in search of a home.

Image credit:
Photograph of L.M. Montgomery, 1930. Toronto Public Library from the Toronto Star Photograph Archive, Public Domain.

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Created February 10, 2002. Last updated March 24, 2021.
© worldofanneshirley.com