Anne of Green Gables
L. M. Montgomery
Anne of Green Gables
34 chapters
4.33from 1,152,432 ratingson Goodreads
The Cuthberts of Green Gables send for an orphan boy to help on the farm and are delivered an eleven-year-old girl with red hair, no possessions and an inexhaustible supply of words. Anne Shirley talks, imagines and blunders her way into Avonlea, and the elderly brother and sister who meant to send her back find they cannot.
About the book
Published in 1908 after five rejections and two years in a hatbox, Anne of Green Gables begins with a mistake: Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert send to the orphanage for a boy to help on the farm and are met at the station by an eleven-year-old girl with red hair, a carpet bag and an unstoppable flow of talk. By the time Marilla has decided what to do about it, Anne has renamed the local geography, smashed a slate over Gilbert Blythe’s head, dyed her hair green, and become necessary. Montgomery set it in the Prince Edward Island she grew up in, and drew the household from the strict grandparents who raised her. The book is funnier and less sentimental than its reputation: Marilla’s conversion is slow and grudging, Matthew barely speaks, and what Anne wants is not adventure but somewhere she is allowed to stay.
Characters
Anne Shirley — Protagonist
An eleven-year-old orphan with red hair, a huge vocabulary and a talent for imagining her way past things.
Marilla Cuthbert — Guardian
Practical, severe and unaccustomed to children, determined to send Anne back and unable to do it.
Matthew Cuthbert — Marilla’s brother
Shy to the point of silence with everyone but Anne, and the first person ever glad to see her.
Diana Barry — Bosom friend
The neighbour’s daughter Anne swears eternal friendship to on sight, and once accidentally makes drunk.
Gilbert Blythe — Rival
The schoolboy who calls her Carrots, is not forgiven for years, and becomes her equal at everything.
Rachel Lynde — Neighbour
Avonlea’s chief observer and commentator, who says what she thinks of Anne within a minute of meeting her.
Miss Stacy — Teacher
The new schoolmistress who takes Anne seriously and prepares her for the entrance examinations.
About the author
L. M. Montgomery (1874–1942) was a Canadian novelist from Prince Edward Island, raised by strict grandparents after her mother died and her father left her behind. She wrote Anne of Green Gables in the evenings while keeping house for her grandmother and running the local post office out of the kitchen — which is how she posted the manuscript and how, five times, she received it back. She put it in a hatbox for two years before trying once more. She published more than twenty books, most of them set on the island, and kept journals for fifty years that are now read as a work in their own right.