Novel
Anne of Green Gables
Lucy Maud Montgomery · 1908
Opening lines
MRS. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place […]
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, an ageing brother and sister of the farm of Green Gables, in Avonlea, have asked, through a neighbour, for a boy capable of helping in the fields to be brought to them from the orphanage. At the station, Matthew finds a girl of eleven, Anne Shirley, red-haired, thin, talkative and full of imagination. Marilla wants to send her back at once; Matthew, who has never known how to talk to women, would like her to stay. It must be decided what to do with this child.
Context
The starting point is a single notebook entry: an elderly couple asks an orphanage for a boy, and a girl is sent to them by mistake. Completed in January 1906, the manuscript was refused by five houses and put away in a hatbox before being submitted again. L. C. Page, of Boston, accepted it in 1907 and published it in June 1908: nineteen thousand copies in five months, ten printings in the first year. The author's disputes with this publisher then turned into more than ten years of lawsuits. In Japan, a translation made in secret during the war, the book coming from an enemy country, appeared in 1952 and later entered the school curriculum.
Who it is for
A childhood novel that can be read at any age and without difficulty. The series comprises eight novels, but the first volume stands on its own.
Prizes and reception
More than fifty million copies and at least thirty-six languages. Mark Twain saw in the heroine the most endearing child since the immortal Alice.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.