The World of Anne of Green Gables and Lucy Maud Montgomery

Montgomery was born in Clifton, Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.) in 1874. (The name of the town has been changed to New London.) Her mother died shortly thereafter and her Grandparents who lived in Cavendish had the job of raising her.

Even as a child, she had a vivid imagination and used books and writing to fill her time. She published her first poem, 'On Cape LeForce', while attending the one-room school near her Grandparents' home. She received her teaching license from the Prince of Wales College and taught at three P.E.I. schools, eventually leaving to study English literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She began her 'career' as an author when she received payment for her writing during the time she spent at Dalhousie.

She returned to Cavendish after her Grandfather died to look after her Grandmother and lived there for most of the next 13 years.( Except when she worked as a proofreader for the Daily Echo in Halifax.) While in Cavendish, she wrote and attempted to have published many poems and stories. Eventually, she managed to earn a comfortable living from the earnings of her writing. That was an amazing accomplishment for a woman of those times!

In 1905, she wrote and tried to have Anne of Green Gables published but it was, believe it or not, rejected! Luckily for us, in 1907 the Page Company of Boston, Massachusetts, agreed to publish it in 1908 and that, as we all know is where it all began! The book was an instant hit and launched her on a successful career.

Following Anne of Green Gables were a wonderful series of books. Montgomery eventually wrote 500 short stories and twenty novels.

Long after Montgomery's death in 1942, a television miniseries and several other television movies and programs in Canada and the U.S. were produced.

This year, 2008, actually marks the 100th Anniversary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables. A new book, Before Green Gables, tells of the time in Anne Shirley's life before she arrived on the Island as well as a new hardcover edition of the original Anne of Green Gables story have been published to help celebrate the anniversary.

There are many wonderful websites with more information about Montgomery and Anne of Green Gables. If you simply do a search for one or the other, you will find reams of interesting information.

If you are putting together a complete collection of Montgomery's works, you might find it helpful to print and save the list of her writings that follows.

There are many wonderful Anne of Green Gables items available on eBay. That is where I have my books available for sale. If you are building a collection or seeking out just one interesting Montgomery book, I hope you will check out those that I have listed in my eBay store in my Prince Edward Island section.

There are many movies and shows available as well as some wonderful CDs of the live musical performances throughout the years. Anne has been produced on P.E.I. for the past 25 years!

Prince Edward Island is indeed a magical place, as it is portrayed in the books, and if you are able to visit and you love Anne of Green Gables, it will be well worth your time!

Seeing the live performance of Anne was a highlight of my family's visit to to the island and my children are both boys! If you want to see the live performance, I would recommend you buy your tickets in advance.

When we visited P.E.I. for a summer vacation a few years ago, I thought that would be enough. I never would have dreamed that I would be ready for another visit so quickly! However, all of this reading about Montgomery and her books (I even recently rewatched one of the Anne of Green Gables movies) has made me, once again, long for the east coast of Canada!

Montgomery's books were instant hits and remained so popular that some of them were reissued over and over again. Therefore, a list of her works is definitely a work in progress as there continue to be new books published -- either editions reissued or new writings by current authors on the themes of L.M. Montgomery or Anne of Green Gables. Even some of the newer editions are extremely popular, out-of-print and somewhat hard-to-find. For a younger reader, eager to enjoy Anne of Green Gables, there are junior versions available.

There are antique, vintage and new editions available of her books; some are easier and some are harder to find. These books are cherished by their owners. It is my belief that the people who own them never part with them because even the ones printed in the 1990s can be hard to come by.

If you are interested in expanding your collection or even starting one, make sure to check out the selection of wonderful books that are listed in my eBay store. Some are listed below and and all of the books that I have for sale that were written either by L.M. Montgomery or about her can be found by visiting my eBay store at Treasures By Brenda.

Whichever ones you do have, be sure to share them with the children in your life!

Are you ready for the fourth installment in the Anne of Green Gables series? It is a brand-new screenplay, a three-hour television movie based on the characters that Lucy Maud Montgomery created and written by Kevin Sullivan. It is a prequel to the 1985 Anne of Green Gables mini-series and was released on television in Canada in October 2008.

Eri Muraoka , the granddaughter of the first Japanese translator of Anne of Green Gables, has written a biography entitlted Anne no Yurikago (Anne's Cradle). In this book she tells of her grandmother's life. Her grandmother came from a poor family and eventually, like Anne Shirley, taught school. Eventually she became a transalator and was given a copy of Anne of Green Gables by a Canadian missionary. She translated into English even though it was not politically appropriate at that time. She managed to keep both herself and the translated pages safe throughout the war. Seven years after the war was over, her translation was introduced to the Japanese and later became a part of the school curriculum.

The founder of the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island said that Montgomery had, "genius for making other people able to see images. Even in translation, she's able to make you picture the places and the people so distinctly so that they become part of your own story."

Fans from different parts of the world are attached to the story for different reasons.

The Poles who are very attached to their country, focus on the idea of 'home' which appears in Montgomery's writings. Anne of Green Gables is about a lonely orphan finding a place to call her own.

The Japanese are fond of these books for three important reasons. Anne's love of nature and Montgomery's lyrical verse about the Island tie in with Shinto -- the native religion of Japan and the belief in spirits associated with a particular place.

The Japanese received the first Anne of Green Gables book in 1952, right after the Second World War when there were many orphans and carry those memories with them today.

Japanese women also value the femininity of Anne. "Anne is tempestuous, she has outbursts. Yet at the same time she is a good girl." -- Irene Gammel.

"Everything was invested with a kind of fairy grace and charm, emanating from my own fancy, the trees that whispered nightly around the old house where I slept, the woodsy nooks I explored, the homestead fields, each individualized by some oddity or fence or shape, the sea whose murmur was never out of my ears - all were radiant with 'the glory and the dream'...amid all the commonplaces of life, I was very near to a kingdom of ideal beauty." -- L.M. Montgomery from Stan Sauerwein's Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Incredible Life of the Creator of Anne of Green Gables

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