Last updated: April 2026 · 7 minute read
Discover all eight Anne of Green Gables books in order, listed here with a short summary of each book, the year it was published, and the easiest way to read the series.
The Anne of Green Gables series is a charming collection of children’s books set in the beautiful scenery of Prince Edward Island, Canada. Written by L. M. Montgomery between 1908 and 1939, the novels follow the adventures of red-headed orphan Anne from the tender age of 11 right up until her own children are grown.
Generally suited to readers aged 10 and up, Montgomery’s rich language and descriptive storytelling will also appeal to adult readers returning to the series or discovering it for the first time. The eight main novels run to roughly 2,800 pages combined, a series most readers work through across a few months.
Readers that are new to Anne’s story will question which way is best to begin, with the publication order, or with the chronological order. The two orders aren’t the same. Montgomery wrote the books out of sequence, returning to fill in earlier chapters of Anne’s life after she’d already taken the story forward.
Our suggestion is to follow Anne’s life as it unfolds, beginning with Anne of Green Gables and following the sequence listed in this blog. Reading in publication order has its own appeal, allowing you to experience the series as Montgomery’s original readers did. But for first-time readers, chronological order is the gentler, more immersive way in. Begin with Anne of Green Gables (1908), the easiest entry point whether you’re buying for a child or coming to Anne’s story yourself for the first time.
The series comprises eight main novels, with two related Avonlea short-story collections sitting alongside. Montgomery continued to add to Anne’s story over the decades, and many of the books were written and published out of chronological order. Follow the list below to read Anne’s story as her life unfolds, from the Prince Edward Island farmhouse to the close of her family’s tale.
The first book published in the Anne of Green Gables series, this is where Anne’s story begins.
Eleven-year-old Anne Shirley is mistakenly sent to Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, an ageing brother and sister who had requested a boy to help on their Prince Edward Island farm.
Quick-witted, fiercely imaginative, and quite incapable of staying out of trouble, Anne charms her way into their lives and subsequently into the hearts of an entire generation of readers.
In the sequel to Anne of Green Gables, this next instalment follows Anne as she grows from schoolgirl to schoolteacher.
Now sixteen, Anne returns to Avonlea as the village’s new schoolteacher, determined to reach her students through kindness.
Anne and Gilbert’s once-prickly rivalry begins to slowly soften and blossom into something more than friendship. And when Marilla Cuthbert adopts the orphaned twins, Davy and Dora, Anne helps her to raise them, which brings another host of trouble.
“Welcome back, Anne. You’re a bit more grown up to be sure, but you’re still our old earnest, impulsive, imaginative ANNE.”
—Edwin Markham in the New York American,
The Boston Herald, 1909
The third book in the Anne of Green Gables reading order follows Anne’s college years as she leaves Avonlea behind to study for her BA at Redmond College in Kingsport.
Whilst there, she sells her first story, fends off two unwanted marriage proposals, and faces a tragedy that teachers her what really matters.
As she and Gilbert also drift apart, she begins to question who and what she’s been taking for granted.
As Anne continues to grow up, the next book in the Avonlea series sees her newly engaged to Gilbert.
While he is away at medical school, Anne takes up the post of principal at Summerside High School and lodges in the tower room of an old house called Windy Willows.
Told largely through Anne’s letter’s home, this is one of the warmest and most quietly funny entries in the collection.
Whether you’re starting your own collection or buying for someone who fell for Anne’s story years ago, explore the complete eight-novel series in beautiful matching editions. For a first-time reader, Anne of Green Gables (1908) makes a lovely single-volume gift; for a longtime fan, the full eight-book set is a more substantial choice, with every novel presented in matching editions.
This is where our reading list first strays away from the published order. This book follows her early married life with her childhood sweetheart, Gilbert.
They marry at Green Gables and move to a cottage at Four Winds Point, where Gilbert sets up his medical practice.
Among their new neighbours is Leslie Moore, whose tragic past and present circumstances draw Anne into one of the most moving friendships of the series.
Set seven years after Anne’s House of Dreams, and now a mother of six, Anne settles into married life in Avonlea.
Living at their house, Ingleside, her and Gilbert’s days fill with the small dramas of childhood: imaginary friends, schoolyard scuffles, and the unwelcome presence of Gilbert’s overbearing Aunt Mary Maria.
Though Anne of Ingleside was the last Anne novel Montgomery wrote, it sits chronologically between Books 5 and 7.
In the seventh book of the reading series, Anne’s children take centre stage.
When widower John Meredith moves to Glen St. Mary to take over as minister, he brings his four young children with him. Wild and mischievous, they soon make friends with Anne’s youngsters. The group play in the Rainbow Valley hollow, and together they get into all the imagivative trouble their mother once did.
This is a gentler instalment in Anne’s tale that sets up the emotional weight of the final novel.
This book concludes Anne’s story with the tale of her youngest daughter, Bertha Marilla or ‘Rilla’.
Rilla comes of age as the First World War breaks out and her brothers enlist. Often considered the most powerful book in the series, Rilla’s story echoes the early years of Anne’s life and reminds the reader how far their favourite mischievous red-head has come.
Rilla of Ingleside is one of the very few contemporary novels written from a Canadian woman’s perspective on the home front, and it is the natural close to Anne’s story.
“We miss so much out of life if we do not love. The more we love the richer life is.”
—Rilla of Ingleside
Montgomery returned to Avonlea in two short story collections, Chronicles of Avonlea (1912) and Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920), both of which can be read alongside or after the main series.
The Anne of Green Gables story has reached readers and audiences far beyond the page. Montgomery’s books have seen countless adaptations, including films, television series, ballets, and musicals. Notable among them are the 1985 Anne of Green Gables film starring Richard Farnsworth as Matthew Cuthbert, and Netflix’s Anne with an E, which premiered in 2017. The capital of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, also hosts an annual festival at which Anne of Green Gables: The Musical is performed each year.
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Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942) was born in Clifton, Prince Edward Island, and drew on the landscape of her home for nearly all her fiction. She published twenty novels, more than five hundred short stories, and over five hundred poems in her lifetime, and was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1935. Anne of Green Gables, her first novel, was rejected by four American publishers before L. C. Page & Co. accepted it in 1907; it was published in 1908 and has since sold more than fifty million copies and been translated into thirty-six languages.
The writer’s childhood home, Campbell Farm, was opened to the public as the Anne of Green Gables Museum in 1972, 100 years after the house was first built.
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