NEW YORK, NY.- Bonhams will offer a selection of rare items of the Canadian author L.M. Montgomery at its December 4 Fine Books sale in New York. Montgomery is best known for her 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables introducing Anne Shirley, an orphan sent to live on Prince Edward Island with a middle-aged brother and sister who had intended to adopt a boy to help them on their farm. The novel, drawn from some of Montgomery’s own experiences as a girl on Prince Edward Island, became a huge success, spawning numerous sequels and eventually selling more than 50 million copies. The first edition of Anne of Green Gables was printed in such limited numbers that very few copies survive today. The copy offered by Bonhams bears an estimate of $10,000-15,000.

Also offered by Bonhams is an Autograph Letter Signed of Montgomery to an Australian fan (est. $6,000-8,000), in which Montgomery provides a complete handwritten list of all her published books. Letters by Montgomery are so rarely encountered that we can find none selling at public auction going back more than 50 years.

Another key Montgomery item in the sale is a copy of her 1915 novel Anne of the Island, with an optimistic inscription to her new publisher George Stewart of the Canadian firm McClelland, Goodchild and Stewart (est. $5,000-7,000). Montgomery—who at the time had begun a lengthy legal battle with her American publisher L.C. Page & Co.—wrote that she hoped that her new publisher “may never lack a ‘kindred spirit.’”

Auction Preview: December 1-2, 12pm-5pm; December 3, 10am-7pm; December 4, 10am-1pm

Auction: December 4 in New York