Emily of New Moon Turns 100: An Appreciation

November 15, 2023 9:37 PM

We All Love "Anne of Green Gables". What About "Emily of New Moon"? (SL NYT)
posted by toastyk (20 comments total)

I will always resent Dean. What a pretentious jerk.
posted by suelac at 10:11 PM on November 15, 2023 [10 favorites]

Welp I read this and went to get the ebook from my local library and the wait is now nine weeks so I guess Emily is getting her time in the sun. I've actually been reading the Anne books with my kid since the spring and haven't had to wait to borrow any of them.
posted by potrzebie at 10:23 PM on November 15, 2023

I love Emily of New Moon. It is an absolutely brilliant novel. Emily Bird Starr is such a complex literary creation, and one of the best depictions I can recall of being a child with dreams of being an author. Her writings, which appear in the text, are both convincingly juvenile, with clear influences, but also have an individual spark, or flash, to them. No one who’s read the Anne-books will be surprised to find that the storyworld is brilliantly drawn, but I agree with Elizabeth Egan that the gallery of characters are on another level, even people who briefly flit through the text feel like their lives continue outside the covers of the book.

Emily of New Moon is out of copyright and therefore available at Project Gutenberg.

In Finland the Emily books are much read, even to this day. Emily of New Moon was published under the title Pieni Runotyttö, which means “little poem-girl”, and the phrase entered the bloodstream of the culture to the point that even still young women poets are called that. So pretty much every female writer in Finland has to have an opinion of the Emily books, but luckily they are brilliant, so most of them love the books. My wife, who is an author, wrote a fourth book in the series in Finnish with another woman writer, to continue the story.
posted by Kattullus at 10:34 PM on November 15, 2023 [35 favorites]

I don't have a well, but if I did I would always make sure it was covered when not in use.
posted by rikschell at 4:12 AM on November 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

Anyone have a gift link?
posted by TwoStride at 5:24 AM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Anyone have a gift link?

Here's an ungated link from archive.today. (To the OP: it's a nice gesture to add this as well.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:26 AM on November 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

I will always resent Dean. What a pretentious jerk.

When I look at that relationship through a 2023 lens *shudder*. He is the perfect example of the type of dude who claims to build you up, all the while quietly tearing you down.

I'm glad that the series is getting very well-deserved recognition. I loved the books.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 6:07 AM on November 16, 2023 [6 favorites]

@EmpressCallipygos those archive.whatever links work maybe 5% of the time for me. I opened yours in a tab and it's still boinging, long after the other tab (that I opened, and manually surfed to web.archive.org/web/*/<ctrl-v the NYT link and edit out the gorp>, picked yesterday, picked a capture, and clicked) finished loading and displayed the item.

Archive.org is a bit more work for getting the link, but it always works. At least for me.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:32 AM on November 16, 2023

I remember liking Emily a lot more than Anne when I was a kid, but now, as an adult, I can't even remember what happens in the Emily books, whereas Anne is so culturally ubiquitous in Canada that you can't really not remember.

Also, this in the article:

On April 24, 1942, only a few hours after sending one final Anne manuscript to her publisher, Montgomery died of a drug overdose. She was 67 years old.

Was really shocking. How could I possibly not know that?
posted by jacquilynne at 6:51 AM on November 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

You can read published journals of hers, jacquilynne. She was a very interesting woman with a pretty sad life.

I liked the Anne books very much, but the Emily books were something special. I wanted to write (still do, I suppose - not that wanting to necessarily gets you to sitting down and doing it) and Emily's struggles and stubbornness were so interesting. I also loved her family, and how things slowly changed between them to something very deep and loving. And I love Ilse, and Perry. And Mr. Carpenter!

Heck, as a young girl who felt too old for her peers, I even liked the story with Dean - there's a powerful fantasy of being recognized as special by someone older, wiser, well-traveled, a little mysterious. I don't think liking Dean very much, and then being saddened by his actions and then later moving to forgiveness along with Emily did me any harm as a young girl.
posted by PussKillian at 7:10 AM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

Here's a gift link for anyone who needs it.
posted by AgentRocket at 7:10 AM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

Seeing an article about my favorite book in the NY Times gave me “the flash.”
posted by elphaba at 7:12 AM on November 16, 2023 [6 favorites]

This thread is making me want to buy an Emily set for my niece for Christmas but like most out of copyright classics, there are about a zillion probably terrible editions available. Can anyone recommend a publisher that does decently nice editions of these books? Not necessarily fancy cloth bound hardcovers (I don't think she loves reading hard covers anyway), but just not complete fall apart crap?
posted by jacquilynne at 8:19 AM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

Virago, a British publisher, does a lovely paperback edition. I think Tundra Books publishes the Emily series in the US and Canada. I believe that only the first book is out of copyright, Emily Climbs and Emily’s Quest are still copyrighted.
posted by Kattullus at 8:52 AM on November 16, 2023

I am in Canada, where the copyrights for her published works would have all expired together based on the year she died.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:36 AM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

@EmpressCallipygos sorry I didn't know about those types of links and I don't pay for a NYT subscription. I'll keep it in mind for next time.

@jacquilynne I have this set which is basically a mass market paperback and has pretty covers. I have the same set for Anne of Green Gables and it's still held up for me for many years.
posted by toastyk at 10:17 AM on November 16, 2023

jacquilynne: I am in Canada, where the copyrights for her published works would have all expired together based on the year she died.

I was even wronger than that. I had the dates of publication completely wrong in my head, and didn’t look it up because I “knew”. All three are out of copyright. I’m sorry for being misinformative!
posted by Kattullus at 10:55 AM on November 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

I have to admit, I looked up the publication dates and did the math for the USA and wrote a second sentence with a snarky correction and then didn't post it, because I'm trying to be less like that on the Internet.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:14 AM on November 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

I couldn't have been much more than 8 or 9 when I was introduced to Anne, and was probably more like 14 when I found Emily, so there really wasn't a lot of room for them to compete - I loved Anne, but only liked Emily. I suspect if I had come to both series older, it might've been the other way around, though. Anne is a wonderful imaginary friend, but Emily feels more real.
posted by EvaDestruction at 2:56 PM on November 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

someone posted a coffee mug to social media that said "I Rode Faces I Should've Pissed On" & I mentally captioned it "Emily's Quest (1927)"
posted by taquito sunrise at 12:31 PM on November 19, 2023 [1 favorite]