Rainbow Valley is L.M. Montgomery’s tenth book, first published in August 1919 by McClelland and Stewart (Toronto) and the Frederick A. Stokes Company (New York). It is the sixth 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), and Anne’s House of Dreams (1917), and followed by Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920), Rilla of Ingleside (1921), Anne of Windy Poplars (1936), Anne of Ingleside (1939), and The Blythes Are Quoted (2009).
Although the novel is set in the first decade of the twentieth century, it was planned and most of it drafted in the midst of the First World War and published within a year of the war’s end. The shadow of the War looms over the adult and child characters in the book, which is dedicated to the memory of three young men in Montgomery’s community who died in battle.
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Epigraph
“The thoughts of youth are long,
long thoughts.”
—Longfellow
Dedication
To
the memory of
Goldwin Lapp, Robert Brookes
and Morley Shier
who made the supreme sacrifice
that the happy valleys of their home land
might be kept sacred from
the ravage of the invader
Contents
I. Home Again
II. Sheer Gossip
III. The Ingleside Children
IV. The Manse Children
V. The Advent of Mary Vance
VI. Mary Stays at the Manse
VII. A Fishy Episode
VIII. Miss Cornelia Intervenes
IX. Una Intervenes
X. The Manse Girls Clean House
XI. A Dreadful Discovery
XII. An Explanation and a Dare
XIII. The House on the Hill
XIV. Mrs. Alec Davis Makes a Call
XV. More Gossip
XVI. Tit for Tat
XVII. A Double Victory
XVIII. Mary Brings Evil Tidings
XIX. Poor Adam!
XX. Faith Makes a Friend
XXI. The Impossible Word
XXII. St. George Knows All About It
XXIII. The Good-Conduct Club
XXIV. A Charitable Impulse
XXV. Another Scandal and Another “Explanation”
XXVI. Miss Cornelia Gets a New Point of View
XXVII. A Sacred Concert
XXVIII. A Fast Day
XXIX. A Weird Tale
XXX. The Ghost on the Dyke
XXXI. Carl Does Penance
XXXII. Two Stubborn People
XXXIII. Carl Is—Not—Whipped
XXXIV. Una Visits the Hill
XXXV. “Let the Piper Come”