Millions of people know Anne of Green Gables, but how the novel came about has remained a mystery. Looking for Anne peels away the many layers of the mystery and assembles the pieces of the puzzle. Novelists and filmmakers have imagined how Anne came about, but Looking for Anne is the first book to trace the real story of what went into the making of this literary classic. The book’s many discoveries will surprise the Anne readers around the world. It is the definitive story of the making of a world renowned literary classic. Here are a few newsworthy highlights: 1. Looking for Anne dramatically changes the way we think about Canada’s most beloved literary icon. The book challenges author Lucy Maud Montgomery’s own assertion that Anne was born in a flash, revealing that the character was the result of a complex evolution, which in turn resulted in Anne’s dynamic and multi-layered personality. 2. The book uncovers a stunning new cast of characters embedded in Anne of Green Gables, including colorful New York model Evelyn Nesbit and a group of secret Anns, including “Charity Ann” and “Lucy Ann,” that Maud used to create her character but whose existence she never revealed to her fans. For the first time, readers will be able to meet the Anns without the e and be able to appreciate how much Anne is the result of a slow imaginative distillation. 3. The book takes Anne off of the Island and documents that the character and novel were sparked not just by Cavendish apple blossoms, but by the glossy cosmopolitan magazines of Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Toronto. Looking for Anne traces the author’s rare clues through the Victorian and Edwardian popular magazines to excavate the surprising evidence that is missing in the author’s journals, scrapbooks, and letters. 4. Looking for Anne offers a frank and uncensored portrait of an enigmatic and secretive writer, unraveling for the first time, Maud’s sideways ways of telling the truth, of truncating and evading the truth, of telling the convenient truths only. 5. The book traces, for the first time, the intricate architecture of Green Gables and its mysterious relationship to the old Macneill homestead, while also revealing the extent to which Maud fused Cavendish landmarks with global influences to create memorable fictional sites that draw hundreds of thousands of tourists to Cavendish each year. 6. As the authoritative biography of Maud at the time of writing Anne, the book penetrates the murkiest areas of Maud’s life including her bosom friends, and her sexuality, to show how they fuelled the emotions that gave birth to Anne. The book puts the magnifying glass on the years from 1903 to 1908 to reveal how the birth of Anne coincided with the most fateful decisions of Maud’s life. 7. Researched and written by a leading scholar, the book offers ground-breaking research along with rare photography, and unpublished manuscripts collected in archives and private collections across North America.