'Anne of Avonlea, The Companion Edition' Presents Montgomery's Complete 1909 Sequel, with the First Edition's Spellings Restored and Discussion Questions Fenced Until the Stone House Opens

NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2026, In 1908, L. M. Montgomery introduced the most famous orphan in Canadian literature: Anne Shirley, sent to a Prince Edward Island farm by mistake and kept on purpose. A year later, in 1909, she published the sequel. A new Companion Classics edition, Anne of Avonlea, The Companion Edition, presents the complete novel, 90,685 words, all thirty chapters, unabridged, in the text of the 1909 first edition (L. C. Page & Company, Boston), taken from Project Gutenberg eBook #47 and collated against an Internet Archive scan of the 1909 Page edition (located-chapter token agreement 0.960-0.980; a 180-probe test across all thirty chapters matched at 91.7%, every miss resolving to scan noise). Eighty first-edition readings are restored where the common digital text Americanizes them, the 1909 Contents itself prints "An Irate Neighbour" and "A Question of Colour", including one transcription error in the digital text ("slendor" for the edition's "splendour") corrected from the witness.

The story itself picks up the thread a generation of readers already holds: Anne is sixteen and a half, licensed, and in charge of the Avonlea school, governing her class by love instead of the strap; she founds the Avonlea Village Improvement Society and learns what a village does with a hall painted the wrong colour; and Green Gables takes in the Keith twins, Davy, who asks the unanswerable questions, and Dora, who asks none, while up the lane, in a little stone house, Miss Lavendar Lewis has kept an old story unfinished for twenty-five years. It is the direct sequel to Anne of Green Gables, and this edition follows the Companion Classics edition of that book in the same series.

Around the novel, the companion material, all of it original to this edition, includes an introduction on the sequel's reversal, Avonlea educated Anne; now Anne sets out to educate Avonlea; a Who's Who of eleven entries plus the supporting village; four explainers, covering the one-room school and the teacher's year in 1909, the village improvement movement behind the A.V.I.S., twins, orphans, and second adoptions in 1909, and Anne the story-writer learning the magazine marketplace; a short life of L. M. Montgomery; a reading schedule in four meetings with a family read-aloud track; and twenty-nine discussion questions, spoiler-fenced by meeting, so that the stone house keeps its secret until its chapter.

Alongside the book, Anne of Avonlea, Book Club Kit offers the edition's discussion material as a printable PDF (26 pages, US Letter) for book clubs and families reading together: the four-meeting plan and family read-together track, the Who's Who and explainers in full, all twenty-nine discussion questions arranged by meeting, and the "Governing by Love" Journal, one page a meeting, on governing a class, a garden, a household, or a self by love instead of force. The kit is available for $7 through the editor's Payhip store.

Anne of Avonlea, The Companion Edition is available now as an eBook ($9.99) through Payhip, and in The Classics and Companions Shop on the editor's Linktree. Print editions follow on Amazon (paperback, $14.99; hardcover, $24.99). The text is public domain in the United States and in life+70 countries (L. M. Montgomery died in 1942; the term expired at the end of 2012), no territory restriction applies. The 1909 edition's single colour frontispiece by George Gibbs is not reproduced in this edition, a usable scan was not obtained, and the edition claims no illustrations it does not contain; its cover is an original painting made for this edition. This is an independent publication, not affiliated with or endorsed by the Montgomery estate or any licensing authority, and no screen adaptation's design or branding is used anywhere in it.

About the editor

Horace Harriott Jr. is a New York-based author and editor of more than two dozen books, including The Side Hustle Handbook, Master Playbook and The Ultimate Commissary Cookbook. This edition is part of his Companion Classics series of reading-together editions of public-domain classics.

About the book

Anne of Avonlea, The Companion Edition, L. M. Montgomery (author), Horace Harriott Jr. (editor). Companion Classics, independently published, October 2026. Text: the first edition (L. C. Page & Company, Boston, 1909), via Project Gutenberg eBook #47, collated against an IA scan of the 1909 Page edition (University of Toronto copy, second impression, September 1909); 30 chapters; 90,685 words; no illustrations reproduced (see note above); interior proof 348 pages, 6 x 9 in.