Anne of Green Gables Books

Read the eight novels in Penguin Random House's current numbered order. Anne of Windy Poplars was written later but is placed fourth because its events fall between Anne of the Island and Anne's House of Dreams.

Rainbow Valley shifts much of the attention to Anne's children and their friends, while Rilla of Ingleside centers Anne's youngest daughter during World War I. They remain books 7 and 8 of the same family story.

Sources: Penguin Random House's official Anne series page, Penguin Random House's complete eight-book set.

The early books balance humor and warmth with orphanhood, rejection, bullying, illness, grief, and important deaths. Later volumes include childbirth and maternal loss, community prejudice, romance and marriage, and the effects of World War I, including enlistment, wartime anxiety, and death. Some social attitudes and language reflect the books' early-twentieth-century setting.