Antique Emily Climbs L.M. Montgomery – First Canadian Edition McClelland Stewart, M.L. Kirk Frontispiece, Anne of Green Gables Author, 1925

An olive-green cloth book with a colour picture set into the front board — a girl in an orange dress reading in the woods, painted by M.L. Kirk — and the same scene again inside as a full colour frontispiece, captioned "Somehow my books have a meaning there they never have anywhere else." This is Emily Climbs, McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, 1925, the first Canadian edition, with Copyright, Canada, 1925 and Printed in Canada on the verso. About 312 pages.

Emily Climbs is the middle book of Montgomery's Emily trilogy (Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, Emily's Quest), and the one readers reach for when they want the author herself rather than Anne. Emily Starr means to be a writer — sends her poems out, is told to give it up, refuses — which is close to Montgomery's own girlhood, right down to the flash, that sudden glimpse of beauty Emily lives for. For a Montgomery collector this is the more personal shelf.

The colour on the cover is a paste-down, a printed picture laid onto the cloth — the 1920s way with girls' novels, and the first thing to wear. Here it is clear and bright; the board edges are rubbed and the gilt on the spine has darkened. Inside there is age foxing throughout, with a few pages carrying deeper old staining (around pages 170–171) — age spotting, nothing added by hand. No dust jacket.

For a Montgomery reader working through the Emily books, a collector of M.L. Kirk's illustration, or anyone who likes a genuine 1925 Canadian first over a modern reprint.