Name: Rilla of Ingleside
ISBN: 9780143180227

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Benjamin Lefebvre

First published in 1921, Rilla of Ingleside is one of the only contemporary depictions in Canadian fiction of women on the home front during the First World War. Focusing on Rilla Blythe, the pretty and high-spirited youngest daughter of Anne Shirley, the novel paints a vivid and compelling picture of the women who battled to keep the home fires burning. Using her own wartime experience and imagination, Montgomery recreates the laughter and grief, poignancy and suspense, struggles, and courage of Canadian women at war.

Rilla of Ingleside

Bethany

“Would you exchange them—now—for two years filled with fun?”

“No,” said Rilla slowly. “I wouldn’t. It’s strange—isn’t it?—They have been two terrible years—and yet I have a queer feeling of thankfulness for them—as if they had brought me something very precious, with all their pain. I wouldn't want to go back and be the girl I was two years ago, not even if I could. Not that I think I've made any wonderful progress—but I'm not quite the selfish, frivolous little doll I was then. I suppose I had a soul then, Miss Oliver—but I didn't know it. I know it now—and that is worth a great deal—worth all the suffering of the past two years. And still"—Rilla gave a little apologetic laugh, "I don't want to suffer any more—not even for the sake of more soul growth. At the end of two more years I might look back and be thankful for the development they had brought me, too; but I don't want it now."

I wonder if I shall ever feel really glad over anything again. It seems as if gladness were killed in me…..Perhaps some day a new kind of gladness will be born in my soul—but the old kind will never live again.

Caroline Parry

Rilla, Anne Shirley's youngest daughter, discovers the problems and difficulties of coming of age during the terrifying days of World War I.

My heart has suffered irreparable damage, thx

Francesca

It's 1914 and the world is on the brink of war. But at almost fifteen, Anne and Gilbert's youngest daughter, Rilla, dreams only of her first dance and getting her first kiss from the dashing Kenneth Ford. Soon, however, even far-off Ingleside is engulfed by Europe's raging conflict, as Rilla's brothers Jem and Walter both enlist, and Rilla finds herself caring for an orphaned newborn.
   As the conflict spreads, the Blythes wait anxiously for word of their absent sons, and a bad omen leads them to conclude that something terrible has happened overseas. Have Jem and Walter been lost, like so many valiant young men before them? And what of Kenneth Ford? Will he ever return to Ingleside to keep the promise he made to Rilla before he left?
   In this final book in the Anne of Green Gables series, young Rilla Blythe is swept into a drama that tests her courage and changes her lif

Celeste Richardson

Full review now posted!

I DID IT! I actually managed to read all the way through the Anne of Green Gables series, all 8 books worth. They’re not long books, and 8 might not sound like very many, but these are still technically classics and that would a good bit of classic reading in a row. While the books weren’t all as wonderful as the first, none of them were bad and I feel like reading the series in its entirety was worthwhile.

Out of all of the books, this last one was probably my least favorite. It was much more solemn than those preceding it, as it took place during the First World War. Getting a view of the war from the Canadian Homefront, and through the eyes of Anne’s youngest daughter as she’s on the cusp of womanhood, was very different and definitely interesting. We don’t often give much thought to how wartime affects life for those left behind at home after the soldiers ship out, especially those in countries outside our own that don’t see any fighting on their own soil. 

Rilla, Anne’s youngest, has her life radically altered just as she enters her fifteenth year. She’s a fun-loving girl who loves to laugh, and has no desire to plan for the future. The night of her first “grown up” party ends with the announcement that war has been declared in Europe. Before she can wrap her mind around what’s happening, every young man in her life is gone, fighting a war on foreign shore. Rilla has to grow up. She rises to the occasion and becomes a young woman that the whole community can be proud of.

As with all the books, there are still funny situations. Rilla adopts a little war-baby, and her efforts with him add some much needed levity. There was also a faithful little dog who refused to leave the train station until his master came home from the war, which was a heartwarming addition. But as I said earlier, there was a solemnity to this book not present (as often) in the others due the addition of war into the plot. Montgomery did a very good job of capturing the tension and strain of those who have to stay home and just wait on news, and a masterful job of showing characters who have to bridge the divide between mourning and moving on with their lives.

I’m very glad that I can now say that I’ve read the Anne of Green Gables series in its entirety. I think it’s helped me develop a classic habit, which I’m going to do my best to maintain by always having some classic I’m reading, even if I’m only reading a chapter or two a day in addition to the other books I’m reading. It was a practice in endurance, but I feel like it paid off!

Rilla of Ingleside CHAPTER I GLEN "NOTES" AND OTHER MATTERS CHAPTER II DEW OF MORNING CHAPTER III MOONLIT MIRTH CHAPTER IV THE PIPER PIPES CHAPTER V "THE SOUND OF A GOING" CHAPTER VI SUSAN, RILLA, AND DOG MONDAY MAKE A RESOLUTION CHAPTER VII A WAR-BABY AND A SOUP TUREEN CHAPTER VIII RILLA DECIDES CHAPTER IX DOC HAS A MISADVENTURE CHAPTER X THE TROUBLES OF RILLA CHAPTER XI DARK AND BRIGHT CHAPTER XII IN THE DAYS OF LANGEMARCK CHAPTER XIII A SLICE OF HUMBLE PIE CHAPTER XIV THE VALLEY OF DECISION CHAPTER XV UNTIL THE DAY BREAK CHAPTER XVI REALISM AND ROMANCE CHAPTER XVII THE WEEKS WEAR BY CHAPTER XVIII A WAR-WEDDING CHAPTER XIX "THEY SHALL NOT PASS" CHAPTER XX NORMAN DOUGLAS SPEAKS OUT IN MEETING CHAPTER XXI "LOVE AFFAIRS ARE HORRIBLE" CHAPTER XXII LITTLE DOG MONDAY KNOWS CHAPTER XXIII "AND SO, GOODNIGHT" CHAPTER XXIV MARY IS JUST IN TIME CHAPTER XXV SHIRLEY GOES CHAPTER XXVI SUSAN HAS A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE CHAPTER XXVII WAITING CHAPTER XXVIII BLACK SUNDAY CHAPTER XXIX "WOUNDED AND MISSING" CHAPTER XXX THE TURNING OF THE TIDE CHAPTER XXXI MRS. MATILDA PITTMAN CHAPTER XXXII WORD FROM JEM CHAPTER XXXIII VICTORY! CHAPTER XXXIV MR. HYDE GOES TO HIS OWN PLACE AND SUSAN TAKES A HONEYMOON CHAPTER XXXV "RILLA-MY-RILLA!"

Top Canadian Author

This was my favorite book of the series when I was a teen, and I have to say it still is (after book one, Anne of Green Gables, duh). The main reason I have to dock half a star is because there was far too much listing of dates and names pertaining to the Great War that started to feel like reading a textbook, and I definitely just skimmed over those paragraphs. I never before felt like Montgomery had been padding for word count like other readers claim in the rest of the series with nature descriptions, but this rote rambling off cities and people on the literal other side of the world was 100% padding.

Aside from that, though, this book has done irreparable emotional damage and I cried just as hard reading at 30 years old as I did as a teen.

This was my favorite book of the series when I was a teen, and I have to say it still is (after book one, Anne of Green Gables, duh). The main reason I have to dock half a star is because there was far too much listing of dates and names pertaining to the Great War that started to feel like reading a textbook, and I definitely just skimmed over those paragraphs. I never before felt like Montgomery had been padding for word count like other readers claim in the rest of the series with nature descriptions, but this rote rambling off cities and people on the literal other side of the world was 100% padding.

Aside from that, though, this book has done irreparable emotional damage and I cried just as hard reading at 30 years old as I did as a teen.

Alexandra Mellas

Publication Date: First published in 1921
Publisher: McClelland & Steward
ISBN: 0553269224
Age Group: YA/Adult
Genre: Romance/Historical/War
Source: My Bookshelf
Lootability: ****

The final instalment (excluding The Blythes Are Quoted/The Road to Yesterday) of the Anne of Green Gables story. It is the tale of Rilla Blythe, youngest and most care free of Anne and Gilbert's children. Young Rilla is almost fifteen and is keenly anticipating a thrilling and exciting few years before she turns nineteen - unfortunately for Rilla, her whole world is turned upside down by the English declaring war on Germany, a war we will recognise as World War One.

What I Liked: So nearly fifteen that she claims it, Rilla at the beginning of the novel throws us back to the youthful Anne Shirley of Anne of Avonlea. Not nearly as ambitious as her mother, Rilla has the same dreamy appeal of our old beloved favourite. Possessing much of her Mother's sweetness, outright spunk, and imagination, Rilla is the girl in each of us.
Her character growth shows the necessity of an almost instantaneous maturity caused by the sacrifices and uncertainties of the Great War.
Her growing affection for Jims, the war baby she adopts, and her determination to be a heroine regardless of what happens prove her to be a strong protagonist. The appeal of Rilla is feeling yourself grow alongside her. There is an added sweetness in the sweet mystery of her romance with Kenneth Ford that makes her character, and her story, glow.
One of the things I appreciate about Montgomery is her willingness to make sacrifices - her characters understand the pains and suffering of war. She doesn't talk about the atrocities of war and keep her characters in a protective bubble, they must suffer with the rest of the world.

Read more: http://raidingbookshelves.blogspot.co...

Anne Shirley's daughter, Rilla, looks forward to her first dance and her first kiss. But undreamed-of challenges await irrepressible Rilla when a far off war endangers the happy world of Ingleside.

Yeldah Yousfi

Manon van Heumen

I cannot believe it's over. So bittersweet!

karissa🌙

Rilla of Ingleside (1921) is the eighth of nine books in the Anne of Green Gables series by Lucy Maud Montgomery, but was the sixth "Anne" novel in publication order. This book draws the focus back onto a single character, Anne and Gilbert's youngest daughter Bertha Marilla "Rilla" Blythe. It has a more serious tone, as it takes place during World War I and the three Blythe boys--Jem, Walter, and Shirley--along with Rilla's sweetheart Ken Ford, and playmates Jerry Meredith and Carl Meredith--end up fighting in Europe with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. The book is dedicated: "To the memory of FREDERICA CAMPBELL MACFARLANE who went away from me when the dawn broke on January 25, 1919--a true friend, a rare personality, a loyal and courageous soul." Frederica, Maud's cousin and best friend, grew up in Park Corner, PEI, but died in the worldwide flu epidemic of 1918-19. Frederica may have been the model for Diana Barry, Anne of Green Gables' "bosom friend" both had unusual, non-Christian first names, and the fictional Diana's husband was named, perhaps not coincidentally, Fred. Rilla of Ingleside is the only Canadian novel written from a woman's perspective about the First World War by a contemporary. The novel is also groundbreaking as it is one of the first non-Australian texts to mention the Gallipoli campaign and the sacrifice made by the ANZACs. At some point after Montgomery's death in 1942, publishers quietly trimmed Rilla of Ingleside of a few thousand words, removing among other things passages containing historically accurate but now offensive anti-German sentiment. The trimmed version was the only available "in print" version for decades, until a new, restored and annotated edition of Rilla of Ingleside, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre (editor of Montgomery's The Blythes Are Quoted) and Andrea McKenzie, was published by Viking Canada in October 2010.

leah

Rilla of Ingleside' is the eighth book in the ‘Anne of Green Gables’ series. Anne’s daughter, fourteen year old Rilla, can think of little else but day dreaming of her first dance and hoping for her first kiss. However, everything changes at Ingleside when Rilla’s brothers go off to fight in the ‘Great War’ and she comes across an orphaned child that requires care and a loving home. This early work by Lucy Maud Montgomery was originally published in 1921 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. Lucy Maud Montgomery was born on 30th November 1874, New London, in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island. Her mother, Clara Woolner (Macneil), died before Lucy reached the age of two and so she was raised by her maternal grandparents in a family of wealthy Scottish immigrants. In 1908 Montgomery produced her first full-length novel, titled 'Anne of Green Gables'. It was an instant success, and following it up with several sequels, Montgomery became a regular on the best-seller list and an international household name. Montgomery died in Toronto on 24th April 1942.

lily k

It was a warm, golden-cloudy, lovable afternoon. In the big living-room at Ingleside Susan Baker sat down with a certain grim satisfaction hovering about her like an aura; it was four o'clock and Susan, who had been working incessantly since six that morning, felt that she had fairly earned an hour of repose and gossip. Susan just then was perfectly happy; everything had gone almost uncannily well in the kitchen that day. Dr. Jekyll had not been Mr. Hyde and so had not grated on her nerves; from where she sat she could see the pride of her heart-the bed of peonies of her own planting and culture, blooming as no other peony plot in Glen St. Mary ever did or could bloom, with peonies crimson, peonies silvery pink, peonies white as drifts of winter snow.

Carmen Maria

Elaina 

Anum Memon

Danbee Kim

Jasmine Stanway

Amanda

Kathy Jedrzejczyk

Jacalyn Boggs

Briar Rose

Yvette Espinoza 

Noha Abdelaziz

Fifteen-year-old Rilla, the daughter of Anne Shirley Blythe, grows from a carefree, irresponsible girl into a strong and capable young woman during the war years, 1914-1918.