Długa droga do Avonlea. O włoskiej recepcji sagi Lucy Maud Montgomery

A Long Way to Avonlea: On the Italian Reception of the Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables Saga The article examines the reception of Anne of Green Gables and of other L.M. Montgomery’s novels in Italy, where the Canadian writer remained almost unknown for a long time. The first Italian translation of Montgomery appeared in 1939 and was the novel Magic for Marigold, reprinted several times in later decades. Anne of Green Gables aroused the interest of Italian publishers only in the early Eighties, on the wave of popularity of the Japanese cartoon Akage no An, and to this day, translations of this novel usually appear under the title Anna dai capelli rossi (Red-haired Anne) taken from the anime. By the beginning of the new century, several editions of the novel had appeared but did not gain much popularity. Even the fans of the animated TV series rarely realized that it was based on a Canadian novel. A revival of interest in the story of Anne can be noticed after 2012 when the copyright to Montgomery’s works expired. However, a significant impact on the reception of Anne of Green Gables had, above all, the Netflix series Anne with an E (2017–2019), which was very popular in Italy. It became a stimulus to create new and reissue older translations, propose new shortened editions for younger audiences, publish the remaining volumes of the cycle, and translate other Montgomery’s works, previously unknown in Italy. Despite the significant delay in reception, Anne of Green Gables managed to enter the reading circuit and gain the rank of a children’s classic. However, as indicated in the summary of the article, the extent of the novel’s popularity should not be overestimated