L.M. Montgomery

L.M. Montgomery was a Canadian author whose Anne of Green Gables series introduced one of literature's most beloved heroines and has sold over 50 million copies in over 36 languages.

Lucy Maud Montgomery published Anne of Green Gables in 1908 after being rejected by five publishers, and its success surprised everyone, including the author. Set on Prince Edward Island, where Montgomery was born and raised, the novel follows Anne Shirley — a red-haired, fiercely imaginative orphan who talks too much, imagines too deeply, and insists on finding beauty everywhere — as she is placed with elderly siblings who expected a boy. It became one of the most beloved children’s novels ever written and established the PEI landscape as a literary destination.

What keeps Anne of Green Gables alive more than a century later is not just the warmth of its heroine but the quality of Montgomery’s writing. She captures both the humor and the anguish of childhood without condescension, and her descriptions of rural Prince Edward Island have the specificity of genuine love. Anne herself — romantic, dramatic, intellectually hungry, perpetually in trouble — is one of the few characters from children’s fiction who feels as real to adult readers as she did when they first encountered her as children.

The novel has not escaped criticism. Its cultural attitudes reflect the period’s assumptions about race and class, which modern readers will note. The subsequent sequels in the series vary in quality, with some later volumes feeling more obligatory than inspired. But Anne of Green Gables itself endures because it takes a child’s inner life with complete seriousness, and because its heroine — stubborn, ridiculous, and completely alive — refuses to be anything other than herself.