Ah, the bookshelf in our classroom during my later years at primary school, I remember it well. Replete with titles and illustrated covers promising tales for children of adventure and derring-do in exotic lands: Robinson Crusoe, King Solomon’s Mines, Treasure Island. It had all the girls’ classics, too: Black Beauty, Little Women, What Katy Did, Heidi, and Anne of Green Gables. Of course, I never read any of the latter books…until recently, that is, when I finally read L M Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, having been inspired to do so by watching Netflix’s excellent Canadian TV adaptation, Anne with an E (2017).
The novel was published in 1908 by Canadian author L M Montgomery (Lucy Maud Montgomery 1874–1942). Set in the late 19ᵗʰ century, it recounts the adventures of 11-year-old orphan girl Anne Shirley sent by mistake to two middle-aged siblings, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, who run their farm in the close-knit community of Avonlea in Prince Edward Island, Canada. They had planned to adopt a boy who could help them with the farm work and so when Anne arrives, their first instinct is to send her straight back. However, her exuberant pleading persuades them to keep her for a trial period and soon her personality wins them over.
Anne is talkative to the extreme, hugely imaginative, dramatic, an extractor of joy from life wherever it may exist, and a touchstone of youthful idealism, if a little prone to defensiveness over her red hair, freckles and pale complexion. She is also insistent that her name should always be spelt with an “e” at the end, hence the title of the TV adaptation. In this she was played impeccably by Amybeth McNulty, the more so now that I have read the book and see how accurately she nailed the character. The whole series turned out to be a largely faithful rendering of the book and certainly it was a heart-warming depiction of a simple turn-of-the-century lifestyle in rural Canada, well wroth the watch.
Since its publication, Anne of Green Gables has sold more than 50 million copies — that’s actually not far behind J K Rowling’s Harry Potter books albeit having had a century longer to sell copies! And it has that accolade for good reason, so who knows, I may even have to delve into Black Beauty or Heidi next?
