Anne's World: A New Century of Anne of Green Gables ed. by Irene Gammel and Benjamin Lefebvre (review)

Reviewed by: Anne's World: A New Century of Anne of Green Gables ed. by Irene Gammel and Benjamin Lefebvre Anne K. Phillips (bio) Anne's World: A New Century of Anne of Green Gables, edited by Irene Gammel and Benjamin Lefebvre. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2010. Around the world, the 2008 centenary of Anne of Green Gables sparked popular celebrations as well as scholarly conclaves in honor of Montgomery's beloved novel. New assessments of Montgomery's life and work have appeared in response to those events, including Anne's World, a collection of eleven essays written by recognized as well as emerging Montgomery scholars. Co-editors Irene Gammel and Benjamin Lefebvre intend in this volume "to consolidate a vast amount of information, carefully tracing the previous scholarship and signalling extensions; and to establish new points of departure by locating Anne of Green Gables and its production in social, cultural, and historical contexts while also exploring the reception and cultural uses of the novel, thus providing new lines of argument and new domains of study for future research" (8-9). Occasionally the volume might provide more specific overviews of previous scholarship, but it should succeed in inspiring new additions to Montgomery studies. The opening essay, Carole Gerson's "Seven Milestones: How Anne of Green Gables Became a Canadian Icon," touches on issues of "publication, adaptation, reconstruction, commodification, and commemoration" to show how Anne Shirley was transformed "from a fictional character to a national icon and a cultural industry" (19). In an otherwise [End Page 277] productive essay that touches on textual history, film and theatrical adaptations, government investment in the author, her works, and her legacy, international enthusiasm, and more, Gerson occasionally leaves gaps in her summary of previous scholarship. Readers unfamiliar with Sean Somers's discussion of the post-World War II translation of Anne in Japan, for example, would appreciate a few concrete examples of how the translators' choices align Montgomery's work with the "cultural sensibilities of Japanese readers" (Gerson 23). Serving as an apt bookend to Gerson's essay is co-editor Benjamin Lefebvre's "What's in a Name? Towards a Theory of the Anne Brand," the collection's final essay, which extends the volume's attention to adaptation and commodification of Montgomery's works by asking, "How do images of Anne Shirley outside of the novel Anne of Green Gables contribute to or complicate the Anne brand?" (194). Lefebvre traces what Montgomery was and was not able to control in the process of her work's publication, distribution, and adaptation. He also examines the career trajectory of Dawn Paris, the actress who became "Anne Shirley" (literally renaming herself as she appeared in the 1934 film adaptation), concluding that Montgomery's and "Anne Shirley's" "inability to exert control over the name or the identity anticipated the contested ownership of the Anne brand in the twenty-first century" (194). The contributors of many of the essays sandwiched between Gerson's and Lefebvre's contributions also are interested in publication, adaptation, and commodification, particularly as evidenced by international responses to Anne. Gammel joins Andrew O'Malley, Huifeng Hu, and Ranbir K. Banwait in writing "An Enchanting Girl: International Portraits of Anne's Cultural Transfer," noting that although "many prior critics have assumed that people of a certain country may find Anne of Green Gables so appealing precisely because they lack something in their own culture that they find in Anne," on the contrary, "several countries seem to like her because they have found ways to make the protagonist accord with their prior belief systems" (167; original emphasis). Addressing Anne's reception in brief, engaging, but not fully satisfying sections focusing on Iran, China, Japan, and Germany, the authors conclude—with a nod to Carol Singley's assessment of the term—that "adoption itself becomes a metaphor for the cross-cultural homing of Anne, as she is adopted into different familial and cultural structures" (188). Margaret Steffler's "Anne in a 'Globalized' World: Nation, Nostalgia, and Postcolonial Perspectives of Home," uses a postcolonial lens [End Page 278] to examine how Montgomery's novel, especially in its treatment of nature and nostalgia, resonates with a range...

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