"Anne of Green Gables may be the most famous Canadian literary character ever created. She has captured the imagination of young girls around the world, and her popularity shows no sign of diminishing. But Anne Shirley is only the best known of the memorable heroines created by Lucy Maud Montgomery, a group that includes Emily Byrd Starr, Valancy Stirling, and Pat Gardiner. These characters are at the centre of Elizabeth Rollins Epperly's book, the first full-length critical study of all L.M. Montgomery's fiction." "Epperly argues that the strength of the novels lies in their descriptions of nature, the comic interplay of eccentrics and children, and above all the heroines. She points out that Montgomery was a master of the genre of romance, a skill she honed in hundreds of short stories aimed at a specific market. But her heroines reveal a much more complex relationship with the genre. Each one's struggle to establish individual identity is at odds with the conventions of romance. So is the powerful love of home that drives each of them. The expectations of romance readers are confounded, and yet, in the end, the happy endings fulfil the romance formula." "Through her use of literary allusions, repetitions, irony, and comic inversions, Montgomery deftly works with and against the literary convention of which she is in total command. As Epperly demonstrates, Montgomery's place in the Canadian canon arises not simply from the affection in which the world holds Anne, but from her creator's mastery of her craft."--Jacket.