Audiobook · read by volunteers
Rilla of Ingleside
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942)
Read by Karen Savage · 32 chapters · 8 h 37
About the book
The final chapter in the story of Anne’s family turns to a new generation. Rilla Blythe is fourteen when the book opens, a pretty, lively girl who loves parties and dreams of dancing. Then war breaks out in 1914 and reaches the quiet shores of Prince Edward Island, and the Blythe family, along with the whole village of Glen St. Mary, must find the courage to face years of uncertainty. L. M. Montgomery writes with her usual humour and warmth, but also with a new depth, as she shows what the Great War meant for those who waited at home. Sisters, mothers, wives, brothers and fathers all have their part. With more than eight hours of absorbing listening, it is a moving farewell to a beloved world, and it follows the family right through the war years.
Introduction
Lucy Maud Montgomery, who lived from 1874 to 1942, published Rilla of Ingleside in 1921, and it closes the story of the Blythe family in her Anne of Green Gables series. Montgomery is best known for her heroine Anne Shirley, and by this point in the series that heroine has grown up and become a mother. The focus of the story shifts to Anne and Gilbert’s youngest daughter, Rilla.
The novel is set during the First World War, and it shows the courage and endurance of the sisters, mothers and wives, and the brothers and fathers too, who are left to tend the home front. Montgomery had lived through the war herself, and she writes about the long waits for news, the effort of keeping up spirits and the way a small community adapts to a great crisis. The result is among the most serious of her books, though it keeps her gift for humour and her love of landscape.
The recording is divided into 32 chapters and lasts about eight and a half hours. Chapter titles such as Glen Notes and Other Matters, Dew of Morning and The Piper Pipes give a taste of its mixture of local colour and rising tension. The reader has also recorded other books in the series, so listeners may follow the family from the beginning.
LibriVox volunteers record these books in order to share them freely. If you have followed Anne through the earlier volumes, this is a satisfying conclusion. If you are new to the series, it can still be enjoyed on its own, as a portrait of one family’s life in a time of change.
Public domain
Lucy Maud Montgomery died in 1942: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text