Anne of Windy Poplars, L.M. Montgomery’s twenty-second book, was published in August 1936 by McClelland & Stewart and Frederick A. Stokes Company. It appeared in the UK and Australia as Anne of Windy Willows.
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Related page: Reviews of Books by L.M. Montgomery: 1923–1939
About Anne of Windy Poplars
Anne of Windy Poplars is L.M. Montgomery’s twenty-second book, first published in August 1936 by McClelland and Stewart (Toronto) and the Frederick A. Stokes Company (New York). It is the ninth of eleven books to feature Montgomery’s protagonist Anne Shirley Blythe, preceded by Anne of Green Gables (1908), Anne of Avonlea (1909), Chronicles of Avonlea (1912), Anne of the Island (1915), Anne’s House of Dreams (1917), Rainbow Valley (1919), Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920), and Rilla of Ingleside (1921). Fifteen years after claiming publicly and privately that she was finished with Anne Shirley Blythe, she began the first of three books that fill in some of the gaps in the existing series: Anne of Windy Poplars, the first of these, was followed by Anne of Ingleside (1939) and The Blythes Are Quoted (2009). It was preceded by Mistress Pat: A Novel of Silver Bush (1935) and followed by Jane of Lantern Hill (1937).
In Anne of Windy Poplars, Montgomery backtracks to the three-year gap between Anne of the Island and Anne’s House of Dreams, during which time Anne is the principal of Summerside High School. The novel is told partly in the form of letters to Gilbert at medical school, and because the overall continuity of Anne’s life has already been set, Montgomery had to be careful not to introduce elements that would be incompatible with the books already available. The book appeared with some minor textual differences as Anne of Windy Willows in the UK and Australia.
A feature film adaptation of Anne of Windy Poplars, starring Anne Shirley as Anne, appeared in 1940 but was not critically successful, especially compared to the 1934 Anne of Green Gables film that had preceded it. This book also formed part of the basis of Kevin Sullivan’s television miniseries Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel (1987)
Dedication
To
the friends of Anne
everywhere
Contents
Part I: The First Year
Part II: The Second Year
Part III: The Third Year