If L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery had never written anything else, she would still be famous and beloved the world over for Anne of Green Gables (1908), her first published novel. In an appreciative note to Montgomery, Mark Twain, then elderly, irascible, and no pushover for sticky sentimentality, declared Anne "the dearest and most lovable child in fiction since the immortal Alice" (The Green Gables Letters, 1960). The story of Montgomery's red-haired, trouble-prone orphan was first published in the United States by the Boston publisher L. C. Page, who brought out six editions in as many months. Isaac Pitman and Sons published an English edition in the same year, and the book quickly spread to other countries. The majority of its lay readers everywhere have endorsed Twain's judgment. Established critics, however, at least until very recent times, have been less enthusiastic. At best they have dismissed Montgomery as a one-book...