From the author of Anne of Green Gables comes The Blue Castle, a heart-warming tale of courage and romance. Follow twenty-nine-year-old Valancy as she breaks free from the confines of her strict family and sets out to discover a new world of possibility.
Price range: £7.99 through £22.99
Price range: £7.99 through £22.99
| Author |
L. M. Montgomery |
|---|---|
| Imprint |
Read & Co. Classics |
| Categories |
Classic Fiction Family Life Romance Fiction |
| ISBN | 9781473316911, 9781473373938, 9781528770927 |
| Formats Available | |
| Pages | 236 |
| Publication Date | 05 June 2014 |
| Dimensions | 5.5 × 8.5 in |
From the author of Anne of Green Gables, comes a heart-warming tale of courage and romance. Follow 29-year-old Valency as she breaks free from the confines of her strict family and sets out to discover a new world of possibility.
Valency has spent her entire life with her head down, trying to please her overbearing mother. At 29-years-old, she’s never been in love and has resigned herself to a life as an old maid. The only escape Valency has is within the books of her favourite author, John Foster, and she takes comfort in her dreams of the blue castle he so vividly describes. But after discovering that she has a terminal heart condition, she decides to change her fate.
Will Valency be able to free herself from her family’s clutches? Will she ever find happiness and true love?
With themes of hope, inner strength, romance and pioneering feminism, The Blue Castle is a charming tale that is sure to touch your heart. The perfect read for those who grew up with the Anne of Green Gables books and now want to bring Lucy Maud Montgomery’s delightful writing into their adulthood.
“A charming romance.” – Hull Daily Mail, 1926
“In The Blue Castle, we have a story that is ideal in its scheme and its execution. An alternative title would be “Cinderella in Revolt,” this said Cinderella being Valancy Stirling, heroine of the book and a girl who gives us new views of Canada and some of its dwellers. A book to read and keep.” – Sheffield Independent, 1926
“Those who have not acquainted themselves with the stories of the brilliant Canadian novelist should do so at once – her novels are full of human people with whom you can laugh and sigh.” – Hamilton Daily Times, 1913
From the beloved author L. M. Montgomery, this Read & Co. Classics edition is made for the reader who grew up with Anne of Green Gables and has been looking for the grown-up Montgomery ever since. First published in 1926, The Blue Castle is one of only two novels she wrote for adults, and the only one set away from her beloved Prince Edward Island. It is a romance, a story of family and small-town life, and a quiet act of rebellion all at once, and it has been winning readers over for a century. We are proud to add it to the Read & Co. Classics collection in a beautiful edition to be kept and reread – the kind of treasured story a classics library is built around, and one we believe you will return to for years to come.
“Always, when she shut her eyes, she could see it plainly, with its turrets and banners on the pine-clad mountain height, wrapped in its faint, blue loveliness, against the sunset skies of a fair and unknown land. Everything wonderful and beautiful was in that castle. Jewels that queens might have worn; robes of moonlight and fire; couches of roses and gold; long flights of shallow marble steps, with great, white urns, and with slender, mist-clad maidens going up and down them; courts, marble-pillared, where shimmering fountains fell and nightingales sang among the myrtles; halls of mirrors that reflected only handsome knights and lovely women – herself the loveliest of all, for whose glance men died. All that supported her through the boredom of her days was the hope of going on a dream spree at night.” — L. M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle, 1926
The novel unfolds in the invented town of Deerwood, which Montgomery modelled on Bala, a village in Ontario’s Muskoka district that she had visited in 1922. The nature writing Valancy treasures, attributed within the story to the reclusive author John Foster, was adapted from four essays Montgomery had published herself – “Spring in the Woods”, “The Woods in Summer”, “The Woods in Autumn”, and “The Woods in Winter” – which appeared in The Canadian Magazine in 1911. The story’s quiet appeal has carried it well beyond Canada in the years since: it was adapted into a long-running Polish stage musical in 1982, and continues to find new readers coming to Montgomery for the first time.
Price range: £7.99 through £22.99
From the author of Anne of Green Gables comes The Blue Castle, a heart-warming tale of courage and romance. Follow twenty-nine-year-old Valancy as she breaks free from the confines of her strict family and sets out to discover a new world of possibility.
