L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables is one of the best-known and most enduringly popular novels of the twentieth century. First published in 1908, it has never been out of print, and it continues, nearly a century after its first appearance, to appeal to new readers in many locations around the world. Anne of Green Gables is the story of how a little girl, adopted from an orphan asylum by a brother and sister seeking a boy to help them on their Prince Edward Island farm, grows to responsible young adulthood and, as she grows, brings light and life to her adoptive home. Although it is, as Montgomery described it in her journal, a “simple little tale,” it has nonetheless generated not only an international readership but, more recently, an increasing critical interest that focuses on the text’s engagement with social and political issues, its relation to Montgomery’s life and her other writing, and its circulation as a popular cultural commodity in Canada and elsewhere.
This Broadview edition is based on the first edition of Anne of Green Gables. It includes a critical introduction and a fascinating selection of contemporary documents, including contemporary reviews of the novel, other writings by L.M. Montgomery (stories, writings on gender and on writing), and excerpts from the “Pansy” books by Isabella Macdonald Alden.