Where to Start with L.M. Montgomery: A Reading Guide
Where to start with L.M. Montgomery — whether to begin with Anne of Green Gables, Emily of New Moon, or Anne of Avonlea. A complete reading guide to the Canadian author.
L.M. Montgomery (1874–1942) was the Canadian novelist whose Anne of Green Gables (1908) — written after multiple rejections and published when Montgomery was thirty-four — became one of the most beloved children’s novels in the English language, with over fifty million copies sold worldwide and a cultural impact in Canada and Japan (where it has been a classroom standard for generations) that exceeds its already extraordinary English-language readership. Montgomery lived on Prince Edward Island throughout most of her life; her fiction draws on its landscapes, communities, and the specific social world of early twentieth-century rural Canada. The Anne series (eight books) and the Emily trilogy are her essential works; both centre on imaginative, literary girls who resist social pressure to suppress their intelligence and creativity.
Where to Start: Anne of Green Gables (1908)
The essential Montgomery — and one of the most purely delightful novels in the English language. Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, elderly siblings farming at Green Gables on Prince Edward Island, arrange to adopt an orphan boy to help with the farm. What arrives at the train station instead is Anne Shirley: thin, red-haired, freckled, and talking.
Anne talks continuously, notices beauty continuously, names things (the Lake of Shining Waters, the White Way of Delight), imagines continuously, and is hurt by any reference to her red hair. She is not a conventionally good child — she has a temper, breaks things, makes enemies at school — but she has a quality of attention to the world around her that transforms everyone who encounters her.
Montgomery wrote Anne from her own childhood experience of imaginative solitude and the specific longing of a girl for beauty and learning in a world that did not particularly value these things in girls. The novel is warm, funny, and deeply felt; Avonlea is one of the most completely realised fictional communities in children’s literature. The book was an immediate success in 1908 and has never been out of print.
Anne of Avonlea (2nd in series)
Anne at seventeen, teaching at the local school while Matthew ages and Marilla struggles. The most immediate continuation of the first book; Anne’s relationships with her students and neighbours in Avonlea are the novel’s heart.
Anne of the Island (3rd in series)
Anne at Redmond College — the conclusion of the romance plot and the emotional arc of the early books. Generally considered the last essential entry for readers who don’t want to follow Anne through her married life.
Emily of New Moon (1923)
Montgomery’s most artistically serious work — Emily Starr is a writer, not just an imaginative talker, and the novel is explicitly about the creative vocation. For readers who want Montgomery’s best work rather than her most beloved.
Reading L.M. Montgomery
Begin with Anne of Green Gables — it is her essential work and the most joyful introduction to her world. Read the first three Anne books in order for the complete arc of Anne’s youth. Explore Emily of New Moon for her most artistically ambitious fiction.
For the full L.M. Montgomery bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the L.M. Montgomery author page on Editors Reads.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with L.M. Montgomery?
Anne of Green Gables (1908) is the essential starting point — Montgomery's novel about Anne Shirley, a red-haired, imaginative orphan accidentally sent to the Cuthbert farm on Prince Edward Island instead of the boy they expected. Anne's voice — exuberant, romantic, literary, endlessly observant of beauty — is one of the most beloved in children's literature, and the novel's portrait of a girl who refuses to stop imagining or speaking her mind has enchanted readers for over a century. Emily of New Moon is the alternative for readers who want Montgomery's most autobiographical and artistically serious work.
What is Emily of New Moon about?
Emily of New Moon (1923) is the first book in Montgomery's Emily of New Moon trilogy — following Emily Starr, a girl with a gift for writing, who goes to live with her strict Murray aunts at New Moon Farm after her father's death. Emily is a more complex and artistically self-aware protagonist than Anne; the novel is more overtly about the creative vocation and the social pressures that seek to suppress it in women and girls. Montgomery's most autobiographical work and, for many adult readers, her finest.
How many Anne books are there?
There are eight Anne books: Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, Anne of Windy Poplars, Anne's House of Dreams, Anne of Ingleside, Rainbow Valley, and Rilla of Ingleside. The first three (through Anne of the Island) are generally considered the strongest and the most widely read; Anne of the Island concludes the romance plot of the early books. The series is best read in order; each book covers a different phase of Anne's life.
Are the Anne books only for children?
The Anne books are officially children's and young adult fiction but are widely read by adults — particularly Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon, which are frequently described by adult readers as among the books that shaped their sense of self. Montgomery's portrayal of imaginative, intellectually curious girls who resist social pressure to be conventionally feminine resonates as powerfully with adult readers as with the children the books were written for.
