Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery’s first book, was published in June 1908 by L.C. Page and Company (Boston).
Anne of Avonlea (1909) »
Related page: Reviews of Books by L.M. Montgomery: 1908–1921
About Anne of Green Gables
Anne of Green Gables is the first of eleven books to feature Montgomery’s protagonist Anne Shirley Blythe, followed by 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), Rilla of Ingleside (1921), Anne of Windy Poplars (1936), Anne of Ingleside (1939), and The Blythes Are Quoted (2009).
The novel has been adapted numerous times for film, television, and stage, including a 1919 silent film, a 1934 “talkie” film, a 1965 stage musical that has remained a mainstay at the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown, a 1972 BBC miniseries, a 1985 television miniseries from Sullivan Entertainment that launched a parallel Montgomery universe popularized through several television programs, a set of three telefilms from Breakthrough Productions, and the recent series Anne with an “E” (2017–2019). This novel has been reprinted in numerous formats and editions, translated into forty languages, and abridged several times for younger readers. It has also been republished in the form of critical editions: The Annotated Anne of Green Gables (1997), edited by Wendy E. Barry, Margaret Anne Doody, and Mary E. Doody Jones; a Broadview edition (2004), edited by Cecily Devereux; and a Norton edition (2007), edited by Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of the novel, with a foreword by J. Courtney Sullivan and an introduction by Benjamin Lefebvre, was published in November 2017.
This novel has also been the focus of a tremendous amount of scholarship, including book-length studies such as Kindling Spirit: L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1993), by Elizabeth Waterston; Looking for Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic (2008), by Irene Gammel; as well as collections of essays such as Such a Simple Little Tale: Critical Responses to L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1992), edited by Mavis Reimer; 100 Years of Anne with an “e”: The Centennial Study of Anne of Green Gables (2009), edited by Holly Blackford, Anne’s World: A New Century of Anne of Green Gables (2010), edited by Irene Gammel and Benjamin Lefebvre, and Anne around the World: L.M. Montgomery and Her Classic (2013), edited by Jane Ledwell and Jean Mitchell.
“Anne of Green Gables is worth a thousand of the problem stories with which the bookstores are crowded to-day, and we venture the opinion that this simple story of rural life in Canada will be read and reread when many of the more pretentious stories are all forgotten. There is not a dull page in the whole volume. . . .”
–Globe (Toronto)
Epigraph
“The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made you of spirit and fire and dew.”
—Browning
Dedication
To the memory of
My Father and Mother
Contents
I. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Surprised
II. Matthew Cuthbert Is Surprised
III. Marilla Cuthbert Is Surprised
IV. Morning at Green Gables
V. Anne’s History
VI. Marilla Makes Up Her Mind
VII. Anne Says Her Prayers
VIII. Anne’s Bringing-Up Is Begun
IX. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Properly Horrified
X. Anne’s Apology
XI. Anne’s Impressions of Sunday-School
XII. A Solemn Vow and Promise
XIII. The Delights of Anticipation
XIV. Anne’s Confession
XV. A Tempest in the School Teapot
XVI. Diana Is Invited to Tea with Tragic Results
XVII. A New Interest in Life
XVIII. Anne to the Rescue
XIX. A Concert, a Catastrophe, and a Confession
XX. A Good Imagination Gone Wrong
XXI. A New Departure in Flavourings
XXII. Anne Is Invited Out to Tea
XXIII. Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honour
XXIV. Miss Stacy and Her Pupils Get Up a Concert
XXV. Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves
XXVI. The Story Club Is Formed
XXVII. Vanity and Vexation of Spirit
XXVIII. An Unfortunate Lily Maid
XXIX. An Epoch in Anne’s Life
XXX. The Queen’s Class Is Organized
XXXI. Where the Brook and River Meet
XXXII. The Pass List Is Out
XXXIII. The Hotel Concert
XXXIV. A Queen’s Girl
XXXV. The Winter at Queen’s
XXXVI. The Glory and the Dream
XXXVII. The Reaper Whose Name Is Death
XXXVIII. The Bend in the Road