This early ad for Anne of Green Gables appeared in the New York Sun in November 1908, five months after the publication of the book. It includes major endorsements by celebrity authors of the period, two of whom remain widely known today: American author and humorist Samuel Clemens (1835–1910), who, as Mark Twain, was the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), among many other titles; Bliss Carman (1861–1929), a Canadian poet who achieved international fame while living in the U.S. and one of the Confederation Poets; and Temple Scott, biographer and bibliographer whose works include The Friendship of Books (1911).
The endorsement by Twain is frequently misquoted, and even this version is not entirely accurate. Montgomery had received a letter from Clemens’s secretary in which “Mr. Clemens directs me to thank you for your charming book + says I may quote to you from his letter to Francis Wilson about it: ‘In “Anne of Green Gables” you will find the dearest + most moving + delightful child since the immortal Alice.’” This ad appears in The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Volume 1: A Life in Print, as does the full letter by Bliss Carman from which his endorsement is excerpted.