Anne of Avonlea - Couverture souple

"I love books.  I hope when I grow up to be able to have lots of them." Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote in her journal when she was just fourteen.  This journal entry, made in 1889, is significant to readers today who know that when she grew up she not only owned and read many books, but also became the world-famous author L. M. Montgomery.  Maud, as she liked to be called by family and friends, wrote twenty-four books between 1908 and 1939.  Her first was Anne of Green Gables, and her other works include seven more Anne books, the Avonlea stories, the Emily trilogy, two novels for adults, an autobiography, and the novel The Story Girl.

Lucy Maud Montgomery was always writing and reading and was quite a story girl herself, creating more than five hundred short stories.  She also wrote many poems.  One edition of her poetry was published during her lifetime and today all her poems have been collected in a single volume.

'One can't get over the habit of being a little girl all at once...'

You might think I'd have grown out of getting myself into scrapes now that I'm half past sixteen. But between being vexed by my freckles, taunted by a brazen Jersey cow and kept on my toes by the new twins, Dora and Davy, life at Green Gables is just as eventful as ever.

I do try to be a little more grown-up now that I'm a school teacher. The other day I asked the class, 'If you had three candies in one hand and two in the other, how many would you have altogether?' One of my pupil's piped up, 'A mouthful.' Could you have kept a straight face?!

BACKSTORY: Find out about going to school in Avonlea and learn all about the real Green Gables

Turn to page 20 to read about Anne's run-in with a Jersey cow!