Anne of Green Gables

Matthew Cuthbert expects a boy. What steps off the train at Bright River is an eleven-year-old girl with red braids, a fierce imagination, and a habit of talking without pause. Anne Shirley talks her way into Green Gables anyway, and into the lives of Matthew and his stern sister Marilla, who farm in the fictional Prince Edward Island community of Avonlea. The mix-up is the engine of the whole book: two aging siblings send for an orphan boy to help with the chores and get a girl who has never had a home. Montgomery wrote the manuscript in her twenties, drawing on her own PEI upbringing, and L. C. Page & Company of Boston brought it out on June 13, 1908, under the byline L. M. Montgomery.

What follows is less a plot than a string of small disasters and recoveries. Anne breaks a slate over Gilbert Blythe's head after he calls her carrots. She accidentally dyes her hair green. She serves raspberry cordial to Diana Barry that turns out to be currant wine. Each scrape tightens her hold on the household and the wider town, and the book tracks her through school, church, and the slow business of earning a place in a home that never planned on her. Montgomery wrote it for readers of all ages, though it has been shelved as children's fiction since at least the mid-twentieth century.

The novel has been translated into at least 36 languages and has sold more than 50 million copies, which puts it among the best-selling books in any language. It is in the public domain and freely available through Project Gutenberg, and it stays in print in annotated and gift editions, including a Sourcebooks version with material from Montgomery's granddaughter. Sequels began with Anne of Avonlea in 1909 and ran through Rilla of Ingleside in 1921; Budge Wilson's authorized prequel Before Green Gables arrived in 2008 for the centenary. [edit]