The arrival of autumn is cause for celebration. This is the season where, in many parts of the world, people can enjoy the fruits of the farmers’ labours over the past months. In Canada, the Thanksgiving holiday is celebrated on the second Monday of October. Lucy Maud Montgomery has written a number of short stories about this special day, including “The Bartletts’ Thanksgiving Day”. Thanksgiving in the United States is celebrated later in the season. Laura Ingalls Wilder gives a mouth-watering description of a Thanksgiving feast in Little Town on the Prairie. For a look at an Asian celebration, you can read about China’s Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, in Poets and Murder from the Judge Dee historical mystery series.

There are also books celebrating the natural beauty of the season. Round the Year with Enid Blyton – Autumn Book is written for children and describes educational activities that teach them about the plants that abound in autumn and the behaviours of animals at this time of year. Frances Cornford’s Autumn Midnight is a collection of poems that evoke the moods of the season. Finally, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s essay, “The Woods in Autumn”, describes the glorious beauty and “uncanny enchantment of the autumn forest.”

If you would like to help us add more public domain works like these to our collection, please consider volunteering to proof a few pages at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.

Image: Autumn Woods by Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902).