中文物件研究报告｜L. M. Montgomery《Anne of Avonlea》（Boston: L. C. Page & Company, MDCCCCIX = 1909｜版权页印 Third Impression, September 1909｜George Gibbs 彩色贴画封面）

Anne's second book, and the one in which she stops being the child of the story and becomes the teacher in it. This is the L. C. Page edition of 1909, the year it first appeared.

Montgomery opened it with a thank-you to Hattie Gordon Smith, the teacher who had encouraged her at Cavendish — a quiet page to come upon, and a touching one, given that the book which follows is the one where Anne takes charge of a classroom of her own.

The copyright page records three impressions, all of them inside September 1909. That is what a runaway success looked like before modern reprinting: the plates went straight back on the press, twice, before the first month was out. This copy came from the third of those runs, so not the first impression — better said plainly — though only weeks separate them.

Page matters more than the date does. He published the first six Anne books, paid Montgomery about a third of what she was owed, and when she left him in 1916 fought her through the courts until 1928. She never went back. Everything under his imprint therefore belongs to the original issue of these titles, a run that closed for good when she walked away.

What survives on a copy tells you how it was kept. The colour plate of Anne on the front was pasted on rather than printed into the cloth, and is usually the first casualty; the publisher's catalogue at the back is usually the first thing cut away. Both are still here, the plate clear and bright. Well read, plainly worn, and the Boston book of 1909 itself — for anyone gathering the Anne titles in their original form.