And I hope truehobbit and Lali will come and join me.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/77smile.gif)
Well, I read and adored the book when I was eleven, and I found in Anne a truly 'kindred spirit'. This fictional heroine pushed all my buttons. I was an intensely imaginative child, rather withdrawn and very introspective, and in Anne I found a voice. I loved Anne.
![Love :love:](./images/smilies/th_love51.gif)
In fact, I read a lot of those kinds of books written in the late 1800s and early 1900s ... Frances Hodgson Burnett and E. Nesbitt representing the British side, and What Katy Did and Louisa May Alcott and Laura Ingalls Wilder (OK, so she wrote her books in the 1930s but they're set in the late 1800s) for the Americans ... and Anne, of course, for the Canadians.
![MrGreen :D](./images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif)
E. Nesbitt deserves a whole thread of her own. She was a feminist and a socialist, and wrote one of the most wonderfully wholesome and life-affirming British children's novels of all time, The Railway Children (also made into one of the best British children's films of all time, in 1970, starring Jenny Agutter as Roberta). Her wonderful fantasy novels for children were a huge influence on C.S. Lewis when he was a child and later on in life very much influenced his ideas and characterisations in the Narnia books ...
But I digress. Back to Anne.
The first book is the best (and the one that Kevin Sullivan adapted most faithfully, although I have no quarrel with his revisionistic approach afterwards.) The rest of the series ... well, as an adult I regard it less kindly. I didn't like following Anne all the way through to when she was grown up with kids of her own. That first, pristine charm was forever lost.
But what redeems the Anne books is Lucy Maud Montgomery's unerring observations of small-town gossip and small-town narrow-mindedness. This sterling quality makes me forgive her for Anne growing up and for the reactionary attitudes that creep into the final outing, Rilla of Ingleside.
Some of these late Edwardian women writers seem to have had a subversive side to them. Louisa May Alcott and Laura Ingalls Wilder have a subtle but unmistakable feminism, God bless them for it, and yet of course they are very pro-family.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/77smile.gif)
Lucy Maud was a prolific writer. I read tons of her books as a young girl. Some of them are very mawkish. I've never tried the Emily of New Moon series, many regard it as superior to the Anne books (I think Lucy Maud did herself.)
Anne herself remains as one of the most winsome girls ever created, what with her imagination, her fiery temper, her passionate affections and her sweet generosity of spirit. She, and Laura Ingalls, will always have a special place in my heart and imagination.
To kindred spirits!
![cheers :cheers:](./images/smilies/cheers.gif)