Anne’s House of Dreams, L.M. Montgomery’s ninth book, was published in August 1917 by McClelland, Goodchild and Stewart and Frederick A. Stokes Company.
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Contents
About Anne’s House of Dreams
Epigraph
Dedication
Chapters
Editions of Anne’s House of Dreams
Reviews of Anne’s House of Dreams
Related page: Reviews of Books by L.M. Montgomery: 1908–1921
About Anne’s House of Dreams
Anne’s House of Dreams is the fifth 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), and Anne of the Island (1915), and followed by 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).
After Anne and Gilbert are finally married at Green Gables, they settle sixty miles away in Glen St. Mary, where they soon become acquainted with their new neighbours: Captain Jim, who keeps the lighthouse; Miss Cornelia Bryant, who is outspoken about her hatred of men; and Leslie Moore, into whose troubled life Anne and Gilbert intervene. Although still set in the final years of the nineteenth century, the novel very much reflects the time period in which it was published, with the shadow of the Great War looming over Montgomery as she wrote.
Anne’s House of Dreams was the first of Montgomery’s novels to be published by joint arrangement with McClelland, Goodchild, and Stewart (now McClelland and Stewart) in Canada and the Frederick A. Stokes Company in the United States, although her book of poems The Watchman and Other Poems was also published by a similar arrangement.
Epigraph
“Our kin
Have built them temples, and therein
pray to the gods we know; and dwell
in little houses lovable.”
—Rupert Brooke
Dedication
To
Laura
in memory of the
olden time
Chapters
I. In the Garret of Green Gables
II. The House of Dreams
III. The Land of Dreams Among
IV. The First Bride of Green Gables
V. The Home Coming
VI. Captain Jim
VII. The Schoolmaster’s Bride
VIII. Miss Cornelia Bryant Comes to Call
IX. An Evening at Four Winds Point
X. Leslie Moore
XI. The Story of Leslie Moore
XII. Leslie Comes Over
XIII. A Ghostly Evening
XIV. November Days
XV. Christmas at Four Winds
XVI. New Year’s Eve at the Light
XVII. A Four Winds Winter
XVIII. Spring Days
XIX. Dawn and Dusk
XX. Lost Margaret
XXI. Barriers Swept Away
XXII. Miss Cornelia Arranges Matters
XXIII. Owen Ford Comes
XXIV. The Life-Book of Captain Jim
XXV. The Writing of the Book
XXVI. Owen Ford’s Confession
XXVII. On the Sand-Bar
XXVIII. Odds and Ends
XXIX. Gilbert and Anne Disagree
XXX. Leslie Decides
XXXI. The Truth Makes Free
XXXII. Miss Cornelia Discusses the Affair
XXXIII. Leslie Returns
XXXIV. The Ship o’ Dreams Comes to Harbour
XXXV. Politics at Four Winds
XXXVI. Beauty for Ashes
XXXVII. Miss Cornelia Makes a Startling Announcement
XXXVIII. Red Roses
XXXIX. Captain Jim Crosses the Bar
XL. Farewell to the House of Dreams
Editions of Anne’s House of Dreams
McClelland, Goodchild, and Stewart (Toronto) published the first Canadian edition of Anne’s House of Dreams in 1917, with cover art and a full-colour frontispiece illustration by M.L. Kirk. Some later printings of the McClelland and Stewart edition include an erroneous copyright date of 1922. Later McClelland and Stewart editions included a Cavendish Library edition in 1947, a Canadian Favourites edition in 1972, and a new edition in 1989.
Frederick A. Stokes Company (New York) published the first U.S. edition of Anne’s House of Dreams in 1917. It is identical to the first Canadian edition. Stokes licensed reprint editions to A.L. Burt Company (New York) and Grosset and Dunlap (New York).
Constable and Company (London) published the first UK edition of Anne’s House of Dreams in 1917. George G. Harrap and Company (London) released a new edition of Anne’s House of Dreams in 1926.
Angus and Robertson (Sydney) published the first Australian edition of Anne’s House of Dreams in 1925, through its Cornstalk Publishing Company imprint. It published subsequent editions of Anne’s House of Dreams throughout the twentieth century.
Rock’s Mills Press (Oakville, ON) published a critical edition of Anne’s House of Dreams, edited by Jen Rubio, in 2016.
Reviews of Anne’s House of Dreams
Reviews of Anne’s House of Dreams that have been located so far appeared in periodicals from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Volume 3 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader includes the full text of twenty-six reviews of Anne’s House of Dreams.
“The story is a genuine romance of matrimony, a household idyl, and there is in it humor, pathos and a rich humanity. It is a healthy, homely, unpretentious novel told in a simple, spontaneous style. In many respects it is the best thing Miss Montgomery has written.”
—Rochester Post Express
“Like each Anne book before it, Anne’s House of Dreams is a composite. It holds stories within a story. . . . Certainly all this is matter for sentimentalists, but we confess to being just a little sorry for fiction readers who truly do not care for it.”
—The New York World
“Suffice it to say that the story is fresh and wholesome, the characters original with vivid portraiture, and the dialogue throughout spontaneous and natural. In this record of interesting experiences of real people there is much humor and some pathos, and the eternal wisdom of the pure in heart.”
—John W. Garvin, The Globe (Toronto)