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What happens next?
That was the question asked of early-twentieth-century authors Nellie L. McClung, L. M. Montgomery, and Mazo de la Roche, whose stories and novels appeared serially and kept readers and publishers in a state of anticipation. Each author answered through the writing and dissemination of further instalments. McClung’s Pearlie Watson trilogy (1908–1921), Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables books (1908–1939), and de la Roche’s Jalna novels (1927–1960) were read avidly not just as sequels but as serials in popular and literary newspapers and magazines. A number of the books were also adapted to stage, film, and television.
The Next Instalment argues that these three Canadian women writers, all born in the same decade of the late nineteenth century, were influenced by early-twentieth-century publication, marketing, and reading practices to become heavily invested in the cultural phenomenon of the continuing story. A close look at their serials, sequels, and adaptations reveals that, rather than existing as separate cultural productions, each is part of a cultural and material continuum that encourages repeated consumption through development and extension of the originary story. This work considers the effects that each mode of dissemination of a narrative has on the other.
Wendy Roy is a professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Saskatchewan. She researches gender and culture in Canadian women's writing and is the author of Maps of Difference: Canada, Women, and Travel (2005) and co-editor of Listening Up, Writing Down, and Looking Beyond: Interfaces of the Oral, Written, and Visual (2012).
Introduction: Serials, Sequels, and Adaptations in Twentieth-Century Canada
Part 1: Nellie L. McClung and the Pearlie Watson Trilogy
1. Sowing the Seeds for McClung’s First Novel
2. Serialization as Marketing Strategy
3. McClung’s Second Chances
4. Changing Popular and Critical Responses
5. Sequel (Non)Recognition = (Non)Adaptation?
Part 2: L. M. Montgomery, Anne, and Other Sequel Heroines
6. Beginning the Cycle: Montgomery’s First Serials and Sequels
7. New and Old Continuing Stories: The “Teen” Years
8. Anne and Emily of Somewhere Else: More Sequels and Serials
9. Anne Grows Up: The Sequel as Bildungsroman
10. Love for and Criticism of the Red-Headed Girl
11. Adapting and Internationalizing Anne
Part 3: Mazo de la Roche and the Whiteoaks of Jalna
12. From Magazine Short Stories to Magazine Novels
13. Beyond the Trilogy: The Serial-Sequel Continuum
14. More Non-Jalna Novels, and New Jalna Prequels and Sequels
15. From Acclaimed Contest Winner to “Outside the Range of Literary Criteria”
16. The Whiteoaks of Hollywood — les Whiteoaks de Paris
Conclusion: The Next Instalment
Index