The recent 100 year anniversary of the first publication of L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables has inspired renewed interest in one of Canada's most beloved fictional icons. The international appeal of the red-haired orphan has not diminished over the past century, and the cultural meanings of her story continue to grow and change. The original essays in Anne's World offer fresh and timely approaches to issues of culture, identity, health, and globalization as they apply to Montgomery's famous character and to today's readers.

In conversation with each other and with the work of previous experts, the contributors to Anne's World discuss topics as diverse as Anne in fashion, the global industry surrounding Anne, how the novel can be used as a tool to counteract depression, and the possibility that Anne suffers from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Anne in translation and its adaptation for film and television are also considered. By establishing new ways to examine one of popular culture's most beloved characters, the essays of Anne's World demonstrate the timeless and ongoing appeal of L.M. Montgomery's writing.

Irene Gammel holds a Canada Research Chair in Modern Literature and Culture at Ryerson University in Toronto, where she is also the Director of the Modern Literature and Culture Research Center dedicated to the study of modern women writers. The author and editor of 13 books, Gammel is the curator of the exhibit Anne of Green Gables: A Literary Icon at 100. Together with Suzanne Zelazo she has co-edited Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (2010) and Crystal Flowers: Poems and a Libretto by Florine Stettheimer (BookThug, 2010). Gammel divides her time between Toronto and Sackville, New Brunswick.

Irene Gammel's profile page

Benjamin Lefebvre editor of The L.M. Montgomery Library, is director of L.M. Montgomery Online. His publications include an edition of Montgomery’s rediscovered final book, The Blythes Are Quoted, and the three-volume critical anthology The L.M. Montgomery Reader, which won the 2016 PROSE Award for Literature from the Association of American Publishers. He lives in Kitchener, Ontario.

Benjamin Lefebvre's profile page

'The essays are paired and clustered for contrapuntal readings. But each stands on its own, providing twenty-first century readers of Anne of Green Gables - or indeed anyone interested in how classic texts might be read in the twenty-first century- with the opportunity to reflect and respond and renew their acquaintance with Anne and her world.'

English Studies in Canada; vol 36:2-3:2010

'Each essay is meticulously annotated, the biography is comprehensive, and Richard Cavell's "Afterword: Meditating Anne" is a thought provoking and fitting conclusion.'

CANTEXT: The Newsletter of the BACS Literature Group; vol13:02:2011

'This collection is really "Anne for a New Century." As Anne begins her journey into the next millennium, after her first 100 years, Gammel and Lefebvre have proven that there are startling new facets to uncover: her disabilities and her creator's depression; her modern fashions and her ruthless tourism; her long archival life in libraries and her postmodern digital presence. These new approaches reveal that Anne is as new today as ever.'

Holly Blackford, editor of <em>100 Years of Anne with an 'e': The Centennial Study of Anne of Green Gables</em>