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Lucy Maud’s Island

by Elizabeth R. Epperly

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables reached its first 100 years in 2008! To celebrate Montgomery’s creativity and imagination, Prince Edward Island declared 2008 the "Year of Anne."

One hundred years ago–in June 1908–Lucy Maud Montgomery realized a cherished dream: her first novel, Anne of Green Gables, was published. It became an immediate best seller and achieved international acclaim. Translated over time into dozens of languages and re-created through stage, film, music, painting and multi-media, Anne has touched the lives of millions around the world, crossing boundaries of culture and time.

In Montgomery’s story, the red-headed, freckled, talkative, passionately imaginative little orphan girl arrives on Prince Edward Island and is dazzled by its red roads and blossoming fields. Within months of the publication of Anne, visitors were making their way to PEI to find the Lover’s Lane and Haunted Wood Montgomery wrote about and also to see for themselves if life on the Island could be as vivid and yet peacefully fulfilling as she described. They were not disappointed. Since then, generations of tourists have travelled to the Island, finding colourful customs and rich traditions Montgomery described and also beauties of the earth, farmland, and sea she treasured as "ruby, emerald, and sapphire." Many–like Anne herself–feel they have come home when they come to Prince Edward Island.

In 2008, Island clans and communities, schools and libraries, artists and businesses honoured the Island writer whose feisty Anne Shirley continues to delight and whose novel Anne of Green Gables gives readers a small, exquisite taste of an Island life that can be savoured first-hand by visitors.

Live the writing–imagine Anne with us–celebrate our Island’s treasure. Even with centenary celebrations now behind us, Prince Edward Island continues to celebrate Anne of Green Gables, a world classic.