Anne of Green Gables, 3-Book Box Set, Volume I (Anne of Avonlea/Anne of the Island/Anne of Green Gables)

by L. M. Montgomery

Overview

Anne of Green Gables 
Anne (with an e of course) starts out as a mistake. The elderly Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert had planned on adopting a boy to help Matthew with the chores on their Prince Edward Island farm. What are they to do with the red-haired, high-spirited girl who arrives instead?

Anne of Avonlea
It seemed only yesterday that the skinny, freckle-faced redhead had first come to the island. Now here is Anne, teaching at the Avonlea school, 16, pretty, and all grown up. Well, not quite grown up. In fact, Anne is not very different from her restless young pupils—mischievous and spirited as ever and headed for hilarious predicaments with a cranky new neighbor, a hungry Jersey cow, a parrot with an embarrassing vocabulary, and a truly dreadful mistake!
 
Anne of the Island
New adventures lie ahead as Anne Shirley packs her bags, waves good-bye to childhood, and heads for Redmond College. With old friend Prissy Grant waiting in the bustling city of Kingsport and frivolous new pal Philippa Gordon at her side, Anne tucks her memories of rural Avonlea away and discovers life on her own terms, filled with surprises . . . including a marriage proposal from the worst fellow imaginable, the sale of her very first story, and tragedy that teaches her a painful lesson.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780553333060
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	10/01/1987
Series:	Anne of Green Gables Series
Edition description:	3-Book Boxed Set
Product dimensions:	4.50(w) x 7.00(h) x 2.50(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

L. M. Montgomery was born in 1874 on Prince Edward Island in Canada, the setting of 19 of her 20 novels. Included among these books are her beloved Anne of Green Gables series and a number of other novels and short story collections. She died in Toronto in 1942.

Read an Excerpt

Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.

There are plenty of people, in Avonlea and out of it, who can attend closely to their neighbors business by dint of neglecting their own; but Mrs. Rachel Lynde was one of those capable creatures who can manage their own concerns and those of other folks into the bargain. She was a notable housewife; her work was always done and well done; she "ran" the Sewing Circle, helped run the Sunday-school, and was the strongest prop of the, Church Aid Society and Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with all this Mrs. Rachel found abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen window, knitting "cotton warp" quilts—she had, knitted sixteen of them, as Avonlea housekeepers were wont to tell in awed voices-and keeping a sharp eye on the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up the steep red hill beyond. Since Avonlea occupied a little triangularpeninsula jutting out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with water on two sides of it, anybody who went out of it or into it had to pass over that hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of Mrs. Rachel's all-seeing eye.

She was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The sun was coming in at the window warm and bright; the orchard on the slope below the house was in a bridal flush of pinky-white bloom, hummed over by a myriad of bees. Thomas Lynde-a meek little man whom Avonlea people called "Rachel Lynde's husband"-was sowing his late turnip seed on the hill field beyond the barn; and Matthew Cuthbert ought to have been sowing his on the big red brook field away over by Green Gables. Mrs. Rachel knew that he ought because she had heard him tell Peter Morrison the evening before in William J. Blaire's store over at Carmody that he meant to sow his turnip seed the next afternoon. Peter had asked him, of course, for Matthew Cuthbert had never been known to volunteer information about anything in his whole life.

And yet here was Matthew Cuthbert, at half-past three on the afternoon of a busy day, placidly driving over the hollow and up the hill; moreover, he wore a white collar and his best suit of clothes, which was plain proof that he was going out of Avonlea; and he had the buggy and the sorrel mare, which betokened that he was going a considerable distance. Now, where was Matthew Cuthbert going and why was he going there?

Had it been any other man in Avonlea Mrs. Rachel, deftly putting this and that together, might have given a pretty good guess as to both questions. But Matthew so rarely went from home that it must be something pressing and unusual which was taking him; he was the shyest man alive and hated to have to go among strangers or to any place where he might have to talk. Matthew, dressed up with a white collar and driving in a buggy, was something that didn't happen often. Mrs. Rachel, ponder as she might, could make nothing of it and her afternoo's enjoyment was spoiled.

"I'll just step over to Green Gables after tea and find out from Marilla where he's gone and why," the worthy woman finally concluded. "He doesn't generally go to town this time of year and he new visits; if he'd run out of turnip seed he wouldn't dress up and take the buggy to go for more; he wasn't driving fast enough to be going for the doctor. Yet something must have happened since List night to start him off. I'm clean puzzled, that's what, and I won't know a minute's peace of mind or conscience until I know what has taken Matthew Cuthbert out of Avonlea today-"

Accordingly after tea Mrs. Rachel set out; she had not far to go; the big, rambling orchard-embowered house where the Cuthberts lived was a scant quarter of a mile up the road from Lynde's Hollow. To be sure, the long lane made it a good deal further. Matthew Cuthberfs father, as shy and silent as his son after him, had got as far away as he possibly could from his fellow men without actually retreating into the woods when he founded his homestead. Green Gables was built at the furthest edge of his cleared land and there it was to this day, barely visible from the main road along which all the other Avonlea houses were so sociably situated. Mrs. Rachel Lynde did not call living in such a place living at all.

1. It's just staying, that's what," she said as she stepped along the deep-rutted, grassy lane bordered with wild rose bushes. "Ifs no wonder Matthew and Marilia are both a little odd, living away back here by themselves. Trees aren't much company, though dear knows if they were there'd be enough of them. I'd ruther look at people. To be sure, they seem contented enough; but then, I suppose, they're used to it. A body can get used to anything even to being hanged, as the Irishman said."


From the Audio Cassette edition.

Copyright 1982 by L.M. Montgomery

What People are Saying About This

Alfred Breit

Lawrence was concerned with one end: to reveal how love, how a relationship between a man and a woman can be most touching and beautiful, but only if it is unihibited and total.

Reading Group Guide

1.  The critic Julian Moynahan argues that “Lady Chatterley’s Lover dramatizes two opposed orientations toward life, two distinct modes of human awareness, the one abstract, cerebral, and unvital; the other concrete, physical, and organic.” Discuss.

2.  What is the role of the manor house, the industrial village, and the wood in the novel?

3.  Many critics have argued that while Lady Chatterley’s Lover represents a daring treatment of sexuality, it is an inferior work of art, though other critics have called it a novel of the first rank. (“Lady Chatterley’s Lover, ” F. R. Leavis writes, “is a bad novel, ” while Anaïs Nin, on the other hand, describes it as “artistically . . . [Lawrence’s] best novel.”) What do you think?

4.  In “Apropos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (a defense of the book that he published in 1930), Lawrence wrote that “the greatest need of man is the renewal forever of the complete rhythm of life and death, the rhythm of the sun’s year, the body’s year of a lifetime, and the greater year of the stars, the soul’s year of immortality.” How is the theme of resurrection played out in the novel?

5.  From the time it was banned from unexpurgated publication in the United States and Britain until the trials in the late 1950s and early 1960s that resulted in the lifting of the ban, and even more recently, critics have argued over whether Lady Chatterley’s Lover is obscene and vulgar. Lawrence argues in “Apropos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover”that “we shall never free the phallic reality [i. e., sex] . . . till we give it its own phallic language and use the obscene words”; his goal was to purify these words. Critics have disagreed as to whether he succeeded in this goal; Richard Aldington notes, for example, that the words are “incrusted with nastiness” and “cannot regain their purity” and Graham Hough argues that “the fact remains that the connotations of the obscene physical words are either facetious or vulgar.” Do you think the novel is obscene or vulgar, or do you think Lawrence succeeds in his mission?

6.  “The essential function of art is moral, ” Lawrence once wrote. “Not aesthetic, not decorative, not pastime and recreation. But moral.” Do you think this proposition informs the shape, structure, and meaning of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and if so, how?

7.  Critics have often complained that one of Lawrence’s weaknesses as a novelist is his characterization. So John Middleton Murry writes of Sons and Lovers that “we can discern no individuality whatever in the denizens of Mr. Lawrence’s world. We should have thought that we should have been able to distinguish between male and female at least. But no! Remove the names, remove the sedulous catalogues of unnecessary clothing . . . and man and woman are as indistinguishable as octopods in an aquarium tank.” And Edwin Muir comments generally that “we remember the scenes in his novels; we forget the names of his men and women. We should not know any of them if we met them in the street.” Do you think this applies in the case of Lady Chatterley’s Lover? If so, do you think it is a fault or a virtue?

8.  How does nature imagery function in the novel?

Editorial Reviews

When mischievous orphan Anne Shirley arrives at the Cuthbert farm Green Gables, she knows she wants to stay forever. But the Cuthbert's were expecting a boy orphan -- someone strong enough to help with their farmwork. Can spunky Anne win their hearts? This beautiful picture book adaptation of L. M. Montgomery's classic novel will delight the author's many fans -- and captivate a new audience of younger readers.

barnesandnoble.com

This simplified picture-book retelling of how the 11-year-old orphan comes to Prince Edward Island is adapted from L.M. Montgomery's classic. Ages 5-8. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Montgomery is the latest author to join Running Press's ongoing "Courage Classics'' series of budget hardcover reprints of classic works. Along with the full text, this edition includes excerpts from the author's journal. Also new in the line is Short Stories and Tall Tales by Mark Twain ( ISBN 1-56138-323-6 ), which offers pieces gleaned from Running Press's The Unabridged Mark Twain . At this bargain price, both titles are excellent choices.

Library Journal

Gr 5-8-The nostalgic charm of Avonlea comes alive in Lucy Maud Montgomery's heart-warming tale set on the quaint island of Prince William about an aging brother and sister, Mathew and Marilla Cuthbert, and their decision to adopt a young boy to help with chores around their farm. However, as the result of a misunderstanding the boy turns out to be a feisty, independent, and wildly imaginative redheaded girl named Anne. Marilla's first reaction to this news is, "What use is she to us?" Wherein Mathew replies, "We might be of some use to her." Throughout this moving story these two statements mix and meld together so richly and completely that they become one truth. Three lives are changed so dramatically that none can imagine life without the others. Each new day brings a new set of adventures, often hilarious and always uplifting. Anne's vivid and overactive imagination is the cause of many mishaps, but her saving grace is her heart of gold. Her best friend and "kindred spirit," Diana, and her handsome admirer, Gilbert Blythe, often find themselves unintentional victims of Anne's escapades. Narrator Shelly Frasier's pleasant voice is especially enjoyable during the rapid ramblings of Anne and as the soft-spoken, slow-paced Mathew. Her voice reflects the human qualities of each character, switching seamlessly between broken and despaired, curt and crisp, or dreamy and absent-minded. This perennial classic, divided into convenient three minute tracks and containing a short biography of the author, is a must have for expanding audiobook collections.-Cheryl Preisendorfer, Twinsburg High School, OH Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

This keepsake or gift edition provides a beautiful hardcover illustrated by Laura Fernandez and Rick Jacobson and using the complete, unabridged text used in the first 1908 edition of Anne. Any who love the story of the red-headed spunky orphan will consider this a fine keepsake edition.