Audiobook · read by volunteers
Chronicles of Avonlea
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942)
Read by Sibella Denton · 28 chapters · 6 h 15
About the book
Avonlea is a small, green village on Prince Edward Island, and it holds more stories than its quiet lanes would suggest. In this collection, L. M. Montgomery steps away from Anne Shirley's own adventures and turns to her neighbours: a slow suitor who has to be hurried, an old lady living alone with her memories, schoolchildren, matchmakers, quarrelling families and a few shy romantics. Some tales are comic, some are tender, and one or two touch on sorrow, but all are told with the same warmth and eye for human foibles. Anne herself is rarely at the centre of these tales. Sibella Denton reads twenty-eight parts of these short stories, which are well suited to bedtime or a quiet afternoon. Light of touch and generous in spirit, these tales are a pleasure for any age.
Introduction
Lucy Maud Montgomery was born on Prince Edward Island, Canada, in 1874 and died in 1942. She became world-famous with Anne of Green Gables in 1908, and she went on to write many more novels, short stories and poems. Chronicles of Avonlea, which appeared in 1912, is a book of short stories connected to the Anne series by setting. It was written in the years after the first Anne novels, when her readers were eager for more stories from the same corner of the island.
Each story stands on its own, and together they build a picture of a small rural community with its habits, its feuds and its affections. Montgomery has a gift for the comedy of character, and for the sudden turn that shows a gruff neighbour to be kind, or a vain one to be more vulnerable than expected. The island scenery, with its red roads, orchards and shining water, is never far away.
This LibriVox recording lasts about six and a half hours and is divided into 28 parts, all read by one volunteer, Sibella Denton. Some stories are split over two or three tracks, so you can listen at your own pace. Today it makes an agreeable companion for fans of Anne, and an easy way in for those who have never visited Avonlea.
These stories do not demand knowledge of the novels that come before, and they make a gentle, varied collection. There is room for laughter, for wistfulness and for the small dramas of village life, all told in the clear and affectionate prose Montgomery did so well.
Public domain
Lucy Maud Montgomery died in 1942: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text