The Blue Castle

L.M. Montgomery wrote The Blue Castle in 1926. It is her only novel fully set outside of her beloved Prince Edward Island and was her first attempt at an adult novel. Set in Muskoka, Ontario, The Blue Castle describes the life of twenty-nine year old Valancy Stirling. Valancy escapes her drab and sorrowful world with imaginary escapes to her Blue Castle in Spain where she is beautiful, charming, admired, and loved—everything her true life lacks.

When diagnosed with a heart ailment, Valancy's complaisance is shattered and she rebels, wanting to "live" for a short time before she dies. She finally breaks from her shell, saying and doing exactly as she pleases. L.M. Montgomery's story of Valancy's revolt against the Stirling clan, her new life, and growing love for the swarthy, unacceptable Barney Snaith is a modern fairy tale.

Purchase and read The Blue Castle:



Created October 5, 1999. Last updated March 31, 2021.
© worldofanneshirley.com

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume IV: 1929-1935

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume IV: 1929–1935 edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston was published by the Oxford University Press in 1998. L.M. Montgomery wrote extensive journals throughout her life, which provide personal insight to the talented author. Volume IV begins when Montgomery is 54 years old. These years of her life are full of personal and professional challenges, including financial and health concerns, as well as moments of happiness.


Here is the description of the volume from the Oxford University Press:

The fourth volume of the immensely successful The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery covers the years from 1929 to 1935, a tumultuous period in the writer's life. By 1929, Montgomery was 54 years old and known world-wide as the author of Anne of Green Gables and many other books, yet this was also a time of numerous setbacks. The stock market crash, a drop in royalties from her many books, the need to provide her two sons with a university education, her husband's modest church salary in arrears, and the fact that many loans she made to friends and family were not repaid, placed Montgomery in the position where she had to type her own manuscripts for the first time since 1910. She also had to face personal crises as her sons' university results were extremely disappointing, her husband suffered a total nervous breakdown, she had concerns over her own mental state, there was further controversy in her husband's parish -- Norval Presbyterian Church -- and Montgomery became the unwilling object of a young woman's declaration of passionate love. Yet this was not a period of joy as well--the volume opens with joyful travels to Prince Edward Island and western Canada and ends with her looking forward with great excitement to a new life in Toronto.

Reviews (see additional reviews)

"The journals, with their vivid account of both daily routines and more significant life events, are written with all the passion, wit and insight into human nature that have made Montgomery's 'books for young people' immortal to her readers."
-Toronto Sun

"Montgomery's interweaving of joy and grief makes her a felt presence on the page....Very few books in recent years have given me the depth of pleasure I've found in these first four volumes of Lucy Maud Montgomery's journals."
-Carol Shields, The Globe and Mail

Image credit:
Book cover of The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume IV: 1929–1935.

Purchase and read The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume IV: 1929–1935:


Created October 1, 1999. Last updated August 20, 2024.
© worldofanneshirley.com

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume III: 1921-1929

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume III: 1921–1929 edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston was published by Oxford University Press in 1992. L.M. Montgomery wrote extensive journals throughout her life, which provide personal insight to the talented author. Volume III covers her years as a successful author, balancing her professional obligations and aspirations with family and personal concerns.


Here is the description of the volume from the Oxford University Press:

In the 1920s, L.M. Montgomery is in mature mid-life, and her personal and professional lives are becoming even more complex. Montgomery juggles the demands of motherhood, parish obligations, indifferent household help, grief at the loss of older friends and family, and appeals by her P.E.I. clan for advice and assistance. There are also triumphs and trials more closely related to her position as a best-selling author: growing fame, the successful launch of her new heroines 'Emily' and 'Marigold', the struggle to allocate time for correspondence with publishers and fans -- and actually to write.

We trace the happy conclusion of her lawsuits against an unscrupulous publisher, and the disappointing outcome of the tempest-in-a-teapot suit arising from a minor automobile accident. There are more personal worries: the Rev. Ewan Macdonald's envy of his wife's publishing and social success; the dark shadow cast by his recurrent attacks of religious melancholia; her concern lest their sons show similar tendencies. This volume of her journals shows Montgomery to be a complex, sensitive, successful and surprisingly contemporary writer.

Reviews (see additional reviews)

"These are journals so enlightening, so full of wisdom, humor, philosophy and tragedy that they are worth a winter's reading and reflection."
-Ottawa Citizen

"Like the first two, it makes for compulsive reading as a document at once personal and brilliantly illuminative of a decade of our social history."
-Literary Review of Canada

"The book, however, is irresistible to anyone who has read Montgomery's fiction....In it, Montgomery comes to life in a way that is only possible in the pages of a journal."
-Toronto Star

Image credit:
Book cover of The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume III: 1921–1929.

Purchase and read The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume III: 1921–1929:


Created October 1, 1999. Last updated August 20, 2024.
© worldofanneshirley.com

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume II: 1910-1921

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume II: 1910-1921 edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston was published by the Oxford University Press in 1987. L.M. Montgomery wrote extensive journals throughout her life, which provide personal insight to the talented author. Volume II covers the years after Anne of Green Gables was published to wide acclaim. L.M. Montgomery gets married, and she and her husband travel to Scotland and England on their honeymoon. She leaves Prince Edward Island, and she and her husband settle in Ontario.


Here is the description of the volume from the Oxford University Press:

This volume of Lucy Maud Montgomery's journals records a time of great change and upheaval both in Montgomery's life and in society. When she wrote the first entry in this volume she had recently become a world-famous author, having published Anne of Green Gables in 1908. Here we become privy to her response to the death of her grandmother, her marriage and honeymoon trip to Scotland and England, and her departure from Prince Edward Island to the new restrictions of her life as the wife of a Presbyterian minister in an Ontario village.

Montgomery reveals the intensities of friendships, the minutiae of homemaking, and the joys of motherhood along with the traumas of a disturbed marriage. By turns tart and sentimental, sharp-sighted and anxiety-ridden, L.M. Montgomery provides a compelling record of her remarkable life against a background -- both social and literary -- of a tumultuous period in Canadian history.

Reviews (see additional reviews)

"The journals, with their vivid account of both daily routines and more significant life events, are written with all the passion, wit and insight into human nature that have made Montgomery's 'books for young people' immortal to readers of all ages."
-Toronto Sun

"These journals are an important contribution, not just to literary and social history, but to the body of Canadian literature."
-Books in Canada

"...one can but commend the editors and their publisher for making such a splendid volume available to us..."
-Atlantic Provinces Book Review

Image credit:
Book cover of The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume II: 1910-1921.

Purchase and read The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume II: 1910-1921:


Created October 1, 1999. Last updated August 20, 2024.
© worldofanneshirley.com

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume I: 1889-1910

The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume I: 1889–1910 edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston was published by the Oxford University Press in 1985. L.M. Montgomery wrote extensive journals throughout her life, which provide personal insight to the talented author. Volume I covers her adolescence and school years through the writing and publication of Anne of Green Gables.


Here is the description of the volume from the Oxford University Press:

Beginning when Lucy Maud Montgomery is fourteen, this first volume takes her to 1910, the year before her marriage, when she left Prince Edward Island. It recounts her schooldays in Cavendish, redolent with incidents, impressions, and romantic "crushes" that found their way into her fiction; a year spent in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan with her father and stepmother; a year of study at Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, where she trained to be a teacher, and another at Dalhousie University; her teaching years; a powerful infatuation with the son of a family she lived with; a long and mostly unhappy period of keeping house for her grandmother; and the publication of Anne of Green Gables. The autobiographical content will fascinate every devoted reader of the Anne books. But the Montgomery journals are especially interesting because they provide a unique social history and the privilege of viewing closely the life of a remarkable woman. Comprising perhaps the most vivid and detailed memoir in Canadian letters, the journals will join Anne of Green Gables in ensuring Montgomery's lasting place in Canadian literature. This volume is a rich and engrossing prelude to the whole.

Reviews (see additional reviews)

"Montgomery comes to life in a way that is only possible in the pages of a journal."
-Toronto Star

"These are journals so enlightening, so full of wisdom, humor, philosophy and tragedy that they are worth a winter's reading and reflection."
- Ottawa Citizen

"We owe Professors Rubio and Waterston a very large debt of gratitude for their patient work on these volumes; they are a record of life-writing unique in our literature and outstanding in any company."
- Clara Thomas, Literary Review of Canada

Image credit:
Book cover of The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume I: 1889–1910.

Purchase and read The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume I: 1889–1910:


Created October 1, 1999. Last updated August 20, 2024.
© worldofanneshirley.com

Anne of Green Gables eTexts and Electronic Books

Where can I read Anne of Green Gables online?

Below are external links to read L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables books online. You can also download the ebooks as epub files, plain text files, or books for your Kindle.

The Anne of Green Gables Series

Anne of Green Gables
Text | HTML | EPUB | Kindle

Anne of Avonlea
Text | HTML | EPUB | Kindle

Anne of the Island
Text | HTML | EPUB | Kindle

Anne of Windy Poplars
Text | HTML | EPUB | Kindle

Anne's House of Dreams
Text | HTML | EPUB | Kindle

Anne of Ingleside
Text | HTML | EPUB | Kindle

Rainbow Valley
Text | HTML | EPUB | Kindle

Rilla of Ingleside
Text | HTML | EPUB | Kindle


Image credit:
Anne of Avonlea artwork by Elly MacKay from the 2014 Tundra Books edition of the novel.

Created September 1, 1999. Last updated September 7, 2022.
© worldofanneshirley.com

Anne of Green Gables Series Chronology

What is the order of the Anne of Green Gables series?

L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series includes eight novels. These books follow Anne Shirley's life in the following chronological sequence:

1) Anne of Green Gables
2) Anne of Avonlea
3) Anne of the Island
4) Anne of Windy Poplars (Anne of Windy Willows)
5) Anne’s House of Dreams
6) Anne of Ingleside
7) Rainbow Valley
8) Rilla of Ingleside

You might be surprised to learn that L.M. Montgomery wrote and published the Anne of Green Gables series in a different order. Learn more about the publication sequence of the Anne novels here.

Purchase and read Anne of Green Gables:



Created September 1, 1999. Last updated April 28, 2022.
© worldofanneshirley.com

Rilla of Ingleside

Rilla of Ingleside (1921) is the eighth and final novel in the Anne of Green Gables series. The novel is rare in that it is the only book about the Canadian World War I home front written contemporaneously from a female perspective.

The novel's protagonist is Anne and Gilbert's youngest daughter Bertha Marilla Blythe, who is known by her nickname "Rilla." Rilla is a fun-loving, fifteen-year-old girl. Like most her age, Rilla has not yet gained an awareness of the wider world around her. As the story opens, World War I begins, and Rilla's eldest brother Jem and childhood friend Jerry enlist. Rilla must adapt and mature to her changing world. She organizes a Junior Red Cross for young girls at her mother's suggestion when Anne tells her, "We will all have to do a great many things in the months ahead of us that we have never done before, Rilla."

Eventually Rilla's brother Walter enlists, although he is afraid of war and death, and her youngest brother Shirley heads to the front when he comes of age. Along with worrying about her brothers, Rilla fears for Kenneth Ford. Before leaving for the war, Kenneth kisses Rilla for the first time and asks Rilla to promise not to kiss anyone else until he returns. With her brothers, childhood friends, and sweetheart all at war, Rilla does her part for the war effort. She keeps track of war news and eagerly awaits letters from those she loves until the war comes to an end.

Purchase and read Rilla of Ingleside and the Anne of Green Gables series:



Created September 1, 1999. Last updated March 8, 2021.
© worldofanneshirley.com