Details

Title

The Child's House

Author

MacMurchy, Marjory

Publication Date

1923

Publisher

MacMillan and Co.

Place of Publication

London

Collection

L.M. Montgomery Institute.

Note

In a 1924 article called “Symposium on Canadian Fiction in Which Canadian Authors Express Their Preferences,” Montgomery and a variety of other authors—including Isabel Ecclestone Mackay, Bliss Carman, William Arthur Deacon, and Nellie McClung—were asked to name their “Three Favorite Novels by Canadian Writers. Montgomery confessed that she would love to list Frederick Philip Grove’s “Over the Prairie Trails” in her answer, but it is a collection of nonfiction. But she followed the instructions and chose three titles: Roberts’ “Heart of the Ancient Wood,” Duncan’s “Doctor Luke of the Labrador,” and MacMurchy’s “The Child’s House.” She says she liked MacMurchy’s work “on its merits alone. It is subtle, artistic, altogether delightful” (see “The L.M. Montgomery Reader Volume One: A Life in Print, ed. Lefebvre, pp. 207–8). What is perhaps unusual about this review of Montgomery’s is that she had told her journal in March of that year “I’ve been reading ‘Vanessa’ [a shortened version of this book’s full title “The Child’s House: A Comedy of Vanessa from the age of eight or thereabouts until she had climbed the steps as far as thirteen”]—Marjory MacMurchy’s story—this week. It is not bad reporting but Marjory cannot create. Still, of its kind, it is quite well done” (“Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. III, 1921-1929, eds. Rubio and Waterston. P. 167). Perhaps Montgomery was being too harsh in her journal while attempting to flatter an author who moved in the same circles by listing her work as a favorite in a public forum. Either way, some readers see interesting parallels between MacMurchy’s Vanessa and Montogmery’s “Magic for Marigold.”

Genre

novel

Type of Item

contemporaneous