Best Books About Clean Classics by L. M. Montgomery

L. M. Montgomery is one of the most beloved authors in the English language - and one of the most prolific. She wrote more than twenty novels, hundreds of short stories, and a journal that has become a classic in its own right, and nearly all of it is clean, wholesome, and suitable for readers of almost any age. Her masterpiece is, of course, Anne of Green Gables - the story of an orphan girl with red hair, a fierce imagination, and a gift for transforming everyone around her - but there is a whole world of Montgomery beyond Anne Shirley.

If you are new to Montgomery - or if you have read Anne of Green Gables and want to know what else she wrote - this guide will take you through her best work, organized by what each book offers.

The Essential Start: Anne of Green Gables#

Anne of Green Gables (1908)#

One of the most beloved novels ever written: Anne Shirley, an orphan girl with a tragic past and an irrepressible spirit, is sent to Prince Edward Island - to Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, a brother and sister who wanted a boy to help on the farm, and who get, instead, a girl who will change their lives. The book is about Anne’s adventures in Avonlea: her friendships, her scrapes, her flights of fancy, her slow winning of the hearts of everyone around her.

It is the essential Montgomery: warm, funny, and full of a love for nature and language that has never gone out of style. Anne is one of the great heroines in literature - a girl who refuses to be ordinary, who names everything beautiful, who imagines her way through hardship. If you read only one Montgomery book, this is the one.

Anne of Green Gables, and Why It Endures#

The book’s power comes from Anne herself: her imagination, her resilience, her refusal to be diminished. She arrives at Green Gables with nothing - an orphan, homely, unloved - and she transforms her world: the farm, the village, the Cuthberts, and the reader. The book is about the power of seeing beauty - Anne names the pond “the Lake of Shining Waters” and the avenue “the White Way of Delight,” and in doing so she teaches everyone around her, including the reader, to see the world more richly. It is a book about imagination as a form of courage, and it has never stopped being read.

The Anne Series: Following Anne Through Her Life#

Anne’s story did not end with the first book - Montgomery wrote eight novels following Anne from girlhood to old age, and the series is one of the great complete arcs in literature.

Anne of Avonlea (1909)#

The first sequel: Anne is sixteen, teaching at the Avonlea school, and beginning to grow up - the book follows her through her first years as a teacher, her friendship with the irrepressible Davy and Dora, and her growing friendship with Gilbert Blythe. It is a gentler book than the first, but it is full of the same warmth and humor, and it is the essential next read for readers who loved Anne’s girlhood.

Anne of the Island (1915)#

Anne leaves Avonlea for college - Redmond College in Kingsport - and the book follows her through her university years: her friendships, her ambitions, her first real loves, and her slow discovery of what she wants. It is the book where Anne grows up, and it contains one of the most moving proposals in literature. For readers who loved Anne’s girlhood, it is the essential bridge to her adulthood.

Anne of Windy Poplars (1936) and Anne’s House of Dreams (1917)#

Two books that follow Anne into her young adulthood: Windy Poplars finds Anne as a principal in Summerside, writing letters to Gilbert; House of Dreams finds her married, living in a little house by the sea, beginning her family. Together they are the books of Anne’s early married life - full of the same warmth, with a deeper current of feeling.

Anne of Ingleside (1939)#

Anne is now the mother of six children, and the book follows her family life at Ingleside - the children’s adventures, Anne’s own quiet moments, the rhythms of a full household. It is the coziest book in the series, and it is the essential read for readers who loved the March household in Little Women.

Rainbow Valley (1919) and Rilla of Ingleside (1921)#

The final books in the series shift focus to Anne’s children: Rainbow Valley follows the younger Blythe children and their friends; Rilla of Ingleside - the masterpiece of the later series - follows Anne’s youngest daughter, Rilla, through the First World War, as the boys go off to fight and the girls keep the home fires burning. Rilla is one of Montgomery’s greatest books, and it is the essential read for readers who want to see Montgomery’s world tested by history.

If You Loved Anne: Montgomery’s Other Heroines#

Anne Shirley is Montgomery’s most famous creation, but she wrote other heroines who deserve just as much love. These books have girls of the same kind.

Emily of New Moon (1923)#

Montgomery’s other great heroine: Emily Byrd Starr, an orphan girl with a gift for writing, goes to live with her strict relatives at New Moon farm. The book is about Emily’s fierce ambition to be a writer - her “flash” of inspiration, her private journal, her refusal to be ordinary. She is a darker, more intense heroine than Anne - where Anne imagines, Emily creates - and the book is the essential read for readers who loved Jo March’s ambition in Little Women.

The Story Girl (1911)#

A different kind of heroine: Sara Stanley, a girl with a gift for storytelling, spends a summer on Prince Edward Island with her cousins, and the book is a collection of the stories she tells - fairy tales, family legends, village lore. It is Montgomery’s most story-centered book, and it is the essential read for readers who love the power of narrative.

Kilmeny of the Orchard (1910)#

A short, sweet romance: a young man teaching at a country school falls in love with Kilmeny, a girl who cannot speak - and the book is about their courtship, and the secret of her silence. It is one of Montgomery’s gentlest books, and it is a lovely read for older readers.

If You Loved Avonlea: The World of Prince Edward Island#

The world of Avonlea - the farm, the village, the sea, the seasons - is one of the great settings in literature, and part of the pleasure of Montgomery’s books is simply living in it. These books are set in the same world.

The Anne Series, and the Island That Made It#

Prince Edward Island is the real place that became Avonlea, and Montgomery’s love of it is in every book: the red soil, the white sands, the sea that surrounds everything. The island is not a backdrop in her books; it is a character - the thing that shapes her characters, the beauty that Anne learns to name. For readers who love the setting, the Anne series is an extended love letter to the island.

Chronicles of Avonlea (1912)#

A collection of short stories set in and around Avonlea - the neighbors, the village characters, the small dramas of rural life. It is the essential read for readers who want more of the world, told in smaller pieces.

The Blue Castle (1926)#

Montgomery’s only novel for adults, and one of her best: Valancy Stirling, a plain, spinsterish woman with a domineering family, discovers she has a fatal heart condition - and decides, for the first time in her life, to live. The book is a romance and a liberation story at once, and it is the essential read for readers who want Montgomery at her most daring.

If You Loved the Moral Seriousness: Montgomery’s Arguments#

Montgomery’s books are wholesome in the best sense - they are about character, kindness, and the choices that make a life - and some of them make those arguments more explicitly than others.

Anne of Green Gables, and the Argument About Imagination#

The book’s deepest argument is about imagination: that it is not a luxury but a necessity, that the girl who can name the pond “the Lake of Shining Waters” is richer than the girl who owns it, and that beauty is something you bring to the world, not something you wait to find. Anne teaches everyone around her - Marilla, who learns to love; Matthew, who learns to speak; the reader, who learns to see - and the book is an argument about attention that has never been more relevant.

Rilla of Ingleside, and the Argument About Sacrifice#

The book is Montgomery’s account of the First World War, told from the home front: the boys go off to fight, and the girls - Rilla, the youngest, the frivolous one - learn what sacrifice means. The book is the most serious in the Anne series, and it is an argument about courage that Montgomery makes with complete honesty: the war costs everything, and the people who keep going are the heroes.

Emily of New Moon, and the Argument About Art#

The book is Montgomery’s argument about the artist’s life: Emily’s gift is a calling, and the book is about what it costs and what it earns. It is the essential read for readers who loved Jo March’s ambition - the same hunger, the same honesty about the price.

Building Your Own Shelf: A Reading Order#

Here is a suggested path through Montgomery’s best work:

• Start with Anne of Green Gables for the essential book.
• Move through the Anne series: Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, and beyond.
• Try Emily of New Moon for Montgomery’s other great heroine.
• Pick up The Blue Castle for her adult novel.
• End with Rilla of Ingleside when you want the war from the home front.

For more books in this spirit, our meaningful clean books for adults list gathers more wholesome, substantial reads, and our meaningful family-friendly fiction list extends the shelf into stories for every age. The stories section of our site is full of guides like this one, so there is always another classic to discover.

A Note on Montgomery’s Life and Legacy#

The books gain depth when you know the woman who wrote them. Lucy Maud Montgomery was born on Prince Edward Island in 1874, raised by her grandparents after her mother’s death, and she drew on her own childhood - the island, the loneliness, the fierce imagination - for Anne Shirley. She wrote Anne of Green Gables in 1908, after years of trying to get published, and the book made her famous almost overnight; she went on to write more than twenty novels and hundreds of short stories, and she remains one of the best-selling authors in the English language. Her life was not as sunny as her books: she struggled with depression, and her journals - published after her death - reveal the darkness beneath the warmth. That gap between the books and the life makes the books more remarkable, not less: the woman who wrote the sunniest books in the language was writing, in part, to keep her own darkness at bay. Anne’s resilience, Emily’s ambition, Rilla’s courage - they are all, in a sense, acts of the imagination that kept their author going, and they have been keeping readers going ever since.

Why Montgomery Endures#

L. M. Montgomery wrote books that have been loved for more than a century, and the reason is Anne Shirley - and the world she belongs to. Anne is the girl who refuses to be ordinary, who names the world beautiful, who imagines her way through hardship, and she has been beloved by generations of readers who see themselves in her. But Montgomery wrote far more than Anne: Emily the writer, Rilla the war bride, Valancy the woman who finally lived - a whole shelf of heroines, all of them real, all of them worth loving. Her books are wholesome without being bland, warm without being sentimental, and full of a love for the world - its beauty, its people, its stories - that has never gone out of style. Meet Anne, and you will want to meet them all.