'Anne of Green Gables, The Companion Edition' Presents Montgomery's Complete 1908 Text, with the Claus Illustrations Restored and Discussion Questions Fenced Until the Bend in the Road

"Anne of Green Gables, The Companion Edition" Presents Montgomery's Complete 1908 Text, with the Claus Illustrations Restored and Discussion Questions Fenced Until the Bend in the Road

The 1908 first edition, collated against a scan of the L. C. Page printing, with its own spellings restored and an introduction on the girl who was sent by mistake

NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2026, In 1908, L. C. Page & Company of Boston published a first novel by a Prince Edward Island schoolteacher-turned-journalist who had watched five other publishers reject it: an elderly brother and sister on a Canadian island farm send to an orphan asylum for a boy to help with the work, and are sent instead an eleven-year-old girl with red hair, a carpet bag, and an imagination with, as she demands, "scope." L. M. Montgomery's *Anne of Green Gables* was reprinted again and again within the year, the copy collated for this edition had reached its fourth impression by September 1908, and has never been out of readers' hands since. A new Companion Classics edition, Anne of Green Gables, The Companion Edition, presents the complete novel, 101,964 words, all thirty-eight chapters, unabridged, in the text of the 1908 first edition, taken from Project Gutenberg eBook #45 and collated against an Internet Archive scan of the 1908 Page edition (the Cornell University Library copy, fourth impression, September 1908; located-chapter token agreement 0.950-0.980 across Chapters I-XXXVII; a 228-probe test across all thirty-eight chapters matched at 92.1%, every miss resolving to scan noise).

The collation also repaired the common digital text. Project Gutenberg's transmission Americanizes Montgomery's spellings throughout, color, honor, flavor, program, where the 1908 Page edition prints the British and Canadian forms its author wrote: colour, honour, flavour, programme, plough, moustache, and practise for the verb. This edition restores the first edition's readings: 101 instances across 31 word forms and 8 verb forms, itemized in the edition's provenance record, chapter titles included, Chapter XXI is again "A New Departure in Flavourings" and Chapter XXIII "Anne Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honour." And where the Secret Garden volume in this series had to go without its first edition's plates, Anne's have survived in usable form: all eight illustrations by M. A. and W. A. J. Claus, the frontispiece and the plates facing pages 33, 91, 112, 156, 257, 313, and 428 of the 1908 impression, from "Matthew Cuthbert, who's that?" to the ridge-pole walk and the walk home, are reproduced from the witness scan itself, each visually inspected, and placed at the chapters they illustrate.

The story itself needs no selling: Anne Shirley, spelled with an e, renaming the lane the White Way of Delight before she has seen her bedroom; Marilla Cuthbert, who wanted a boy and undertakes instead an education in both directions; Matthew, the shyest man in Avonlea, who understands Anne at sight; Diana Barry, the bosom friend; a currant wine mistaken in the dark; a slate, a ridge-pole, a leaking flat dressed as a poem, and an ending this release will not summarize, because Montgomery earned it.

Around the novel, the companion material, all of it original to this edition, includes an introduction on the book's founding mistake and its instant, reader-led fame; a Who's Who of Green Gables and Avonlea; four explainers, Prince Edward Island and the real ground under the fictional Avonlea, the orphan question as 1908 understood it (the placed-out child, the asylum, and the help a girl like Anne was expected to be), the church, school, and society rules Anne has to learn, and the books and poems that feed her imagination; 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 book's final sorrow stays unspoiled until its chapter.

Alongside the book, Anne of Green Gables, Book Club Kit offers the edition's discussion material as a printable PDF (27 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 "Scope for the Imagination" Journal, one page a meeting, renaming a real place the way Anne renames the Lake of Shining Waters, and writing down what the name changes. The kit is available for $7 through the editor's Payhip store: https://payhip.com/horaceharriottjr

Anne of Green Gables, The Companion Edition is available now as an eBook ($9.99) through Payhip: https://payhip.com/horaceharriottjr, 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 (published 1908) and in life+70 countries (L. M. Montgomery died in 1942, and the life+70 term expired at the end of 2012), so no territory restriction applies. The title is used nominatively, to name Montgomery's novel; this is an independent publication, not affiliated with or endorsed by the Montgomery estate or any licensing authority, and no design or branding from any screen adaptation has been used anywhere in the edition; its cover is an original painting made for this edition.

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 Green Gables, 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, 1908), via Project Gutenberg eBook #45, collated against an IA scan of the 1908 Page edition (Cornell copy, fourth impression, September 1908); 38 chapters; 101,964 words; all eight 1908 Claus illustrations reproduced; interior proof 402 pages, 6 x 9 in.