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Blonde Anne of Green Gables stirs controversy

Social media erupted in anger today over photos of a new edition of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s beloved Anne of Green Gables series. Gone is the girl with the fiery red braids, replaced by a young blonde woman who looks like she walked off the set of an MTV drama.

According to the book’s Amazon listing, the publisher of this new edition is CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, an Amazon-owned company that provides self-publishing tools for consumers. While the book is available for $13.49 on the U.S. site, it does not appear on the online retailer’s Canadian site.

Montgomery’s books entered the public domain in 1992, 50 years after her death in 1942. However, the Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority, owned by the province of Prince Edward Island and Montgomery’s heirs, Ruth Macdonald and David Macdonald, still protects the “words and images depicting the fictional characters, places and events described in Montgomery’s novel Anne of Green Gables and related novels.”