Details

Title

Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush

Author

MacLaren, Ian

Place of Publication

New York

Publisher

Dodd, Mead and Company

Date of Publication

1895 Show more1895-01-01T00:00:00.000Z
1895-01-01T00:00:00.000Z Show less

Donor

Donated by Emily Woster

Note

Ian Maclaren’s _Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush_ is a collection of short stories set in the small village of Drumtochty, Scotland. The titles of the stories, such as “The Transformation of Lachland Campbell,” and “A Doctor of the Old School,” might remind Montgomery readers of some of _her_ story titles, with their focus on local drama and individual character growth. But it is the contents of the stories that drew Montgomery in when she first read it. On 8 November 1905, Montgomery told her journal, “I have been reading ‘The Bonnie Brier Bush’ all the evening–and crying over it. I am not to be pitied for those tears, however, for there was no bitterness in them. They were born of a certain pleasure in the sweetness and pathos of the tales–simple, wholesome tales, like a sweep of upland wind of the tang of a fir wood on a frosty night” (‘The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery, The PEI Years,’ Volume II, p. 139). A few years prior, Montgomery had written and delivered a paper on Maclaren at Dalhousie (see her journal entry of 1 December 1895). A contemporary review of the book, from “The Spectator” of 2 March 1895 noted that “No one can lay down this book…without feeling that…he has been made to laugh often.” The book was a massive bestseller throughout the 1890s and early 1900s, but then fell out of fashion. Montgomery, however, never forgot it. In a journal entry from 24 January 1932, Montgomery reflected on Maclaren’s works again. “I re-read the Bonnie Brier Bush and Auld Land Syne [note the ad for this other title inside this volume] some of these sleepless nights and forgot my worries in the old charm. What delightful books they are! What a good taste they leave in your mouth! You feel after all that there are some decent people in the world (‘L.M. Montgomery’s Complete Journals: The Ontario Years, 1930-1933,’ pp 213-24). In a subsequent letter to her pen pal Ephraim Weber, she copied out the same sentiment. “So several nights last winter when I could not sleep I read Ian McLaren [sic]’s Bonnie Brier Bush and Auld Lang Syne, which took the literary world of the 90s by storm. Quite likely you have never read them. I would not think you incredibly ignorant if you have never heard of them. One seldom sees even a reference to them nowadays. Yet they were--and are--delightful books. …I love them! They leave such a good taste in my mouth. I feel after all that there are some decent people in the world-that folks are not all Elmer Gantrys. It is odd to imagine William Maclure [the “Doctor of the Old School” in Maclaren] and Elmer Gantry [Sinclair Lewis’ eponymous “failed preacher”] in the same world. Yet they both exist. But it is much pleasanter to keep book-company with Maclure. Those tales of Scottish rural life have oddly the same flavor as the Cavendish of my childhood, the memory of which is like a silvery moonlight in my recollections" (“After Green Gables: L.M. Montgomery’s Letters to Ephraim Weber, 1916-1941, pp. 204-5). You can read the full text of this novel in facsimile here or in text here.

Genre

book