Looking for Anne How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic Irene Gammel By any standards, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables is a stunning success. Published in 1908 (and not once out of print), Anne has sold more than 50 million copies, been translated into more than 17 languages (including Braille), and become the focus of international conferences devoted to its interpretation. Anne has remained, as Matthew sings in the musical, “forever young,” no small feat for the spunky, in-your-face redhead who, in 2008, celebrates her 100th birthday! But why Anne? How does Montgomery's classic work pull so many international readers into the vortex of Anne's freckled face and carrotty braids? How does this little book create such enduring interest around the world? The answer is far more intriguing than any story even Anne could have imagined. In her journal, Maud's quick pen would froth up the tiniest details of her life into dramatic events, but that same pen never revealed a single word about Anne. As a result, the novel’s secrets have remained sealed for over a century. Looking for Anne is the untold story of a literary classic and a writer who found inspiration in many places including the popular images of the era, such as beauty icons, fashion plates, and advertisements; a writer who quietly quarried her material from American mass market periodicals; who consciously imitated formula fiction to create marketable stories for juvenile periodicals, religious newspapers, and glamorous women’s magazines—and who ultimately, in the storm that brewed up the novel, also transcendedthese influences to create a twentieth-century literary classic that would conquer the world. Blending biography with cultural history, penetrating and uncensored, this is the definitive book on Anne of Green Gables. Looking for Anne captures both the spirit of Marilla’s critical probing for “bald facts” and Anne’s belief in the infinite power of the imagination. It is a must-read for anyone who has ever fallen under the spell of Anne with an “e.” Praise for Looking for Anne: Looking for Anne takes a bold new look at Anne of Green Gables. If you have loved Anne of Green Gables and wonder how she came about, I recommend that you read Irene Gammel’s book. — Kate Macdonald Butler (Lucy Maud Montgomery’s granddaughter) Visit the Looking for Anne webpage by clicking here

About the Contributor(s)

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IRENE GAMMEL is the author and editor of eight books including Baroness Elsa-A Cultural Biography (voted one of the top 25 books of 2002 by New York's Village Voice) and several scholarly books of essays, including Making Avonlea (PEI Heritage Award) and The Intimate Life of L. M. Montgomery. She is the co-curator of the exhibit Anne of Green Gables: A Canadian Icon at 100 in venues in Ottawa,Toronto,Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Prince Edward Island. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.


Other Books by Irene Gammel

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Looking for Anne Looking for Anne

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