Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery’s first book and the first to feature Anne Shirley, appeared in June 1908.
Anne of Avonlea (1909) »
Contents
About Anne of Green Gables
Epigraph
Dedication
Chapters
Editions of Anne of Green Gables
Adaptations of Anne of Green Gables
Reviews of Anne of Green Gables
About Anne of Green Gables
Anne of Green Gables (1908) 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).
L.M. Montgomery’s first book has been the focus of a tremendous amount of scholarship. Book-length studies include Elizabeth Waterston’s Kindling Spirit: L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables” (1993) and Irene Gammel’s Looking for Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic (2008). Collections of essays devoted to this book include Mavis Reimer’s Such a Simple Little Tale: Critical Responses to L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables” (1992), Holly Blackford’s 100 Years of Anne with an “e”: The Centennial Study of “Anne of Green Gables” (2009), Gammel and Lefebvre’s Anne’s World: A New Century of Anne of Green Gables (2010), and Jane Ledwell and Jean Mitchell’s Anne Around the World: L.M. Montgomery and Her Classic (2013).
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
Chapters
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
Editions of Anne of Green Gables
Trade Editions
L.C. Page and Company (Boston) published the first edition of Anne of Green Gables in June 1908. This first edition contains interior illustrations by M.A. Claus and W.A.J. Claus and cover art by George Gibbs (uncredited). Page continued to reprint this edition for decades afterward (eventually with new interior illustrations and a reset and slightly revised text) and licensed reprint editions to Grosset and Dunlap (New York) starting in 1914.
Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons (London) published the first UK edition of Anne of Green Gables in 1908. George G. Harrap and Company (London) released a new edition in 1925 with a slightly revised text and continued to reprint this edition until the 1980s.
Angus and Robertson (Sydney) published the first of many Australian editions of Anne of Green Gables in 1924, initially through its Cornstalk Publishing Company imprint. It published subsequent editions throughout the twentieth century.
The Ryerson Press published the first Canadian edition of Anne of Green Gables in April 1942, the month of Montgomery’s death. The Ryerson Press reprinted this edition for almost half a century, later with an iconic cover by Hilton Hassell and in mass-market paperback format, even after the press became McGraw-Hill Ryerson in 1970.
McClelland and Stewart (Toronto) published a New Canadian Library edition of Anne of Green Gables in 1992, with a second edition following in 2008.
Penguin Books (New York) published a Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Anne of Green Gables, with a foreword by J. Courtney Sullivan and an introduction by Benjamin Lefebvre, in November 2017.
Critical Editions
Oxford University Press (New York) published The Annotated Anne of Green Gables, edited by Wendy E. Barry, Margaret Anne Doody, and Mary E. Doody Jones, in 1997.
Broadview Editions (Peterborough, ON) published a critical edition, edited by Cecily Devereux, in 2004.
W.W. Norton and Company (New York) published a Norton critical edition, edited by Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, in 2007.
Nimbus Publishing (Halifax) published Anne of Green Gables: The Original Manuscript, edited by Carolyn Strom Collins, in 2019.
Adaptations of Anne of Green Gables
Adaptations for film, television, and stage include 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).
Reviews of Anne of Green Gables
Reviews of Anne of Green Gables that have been located so far appeared in periodicals from Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Volume 3 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader includes the full text of twenty-two reviews of Anne of Green Gables.
“Anne of Green Gables is worth a thousand of the problem stories with which the bookshelves 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.”
—The Globe (Toronto)
“We have much pleasure in drawing attention to this novel, not only because it is, in our opinion, the most fascinating book of the season, but because its author, Miss Montgomery, is a resident of Prince Edward Island, where the scene of the story is laid, and is evidently a keen student of both nature and human nature. . . . It is almost impossible for readers to guess even vaguely the treat that awaits them in its perusal.”
—George Murray, The Montreal Daily Star
“It could have been written only by a woman of deep and wide sympathy with child nature, one able to look beyond the trammels of conventionality and discover the hidden jewel uncut and unpolished.”
—The Boston Herald
“This picture of Prince Edward Island life and character by a Prince Edward Islander of genius, Miss L.M. Montgomery, cannot fail to delight every Canadian who reads it.”
—The Gazette (Montreal)