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Anne of Green Gables

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Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert send for an orphan boy to help on the farm. They get Anne Shirley: red-haired, eleven, and never stops talking. By L. M. Montgomery (1908). A public-domain classic.

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How it begins MRS. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.There are plenty of people, in Avonlea and out of it, who can attend closely to their neighbors’ business by dint of neglecting their own; but Mrs. Rachel Lynde was one of those capable creatures who can manage their own concerns and those of other folks into the bargain. She was a notable housewife; her work was always done and well done; she “ran” the Sewing Circle, helped run the Sunday-school, and was the strongest prop of the Church Aid Society and Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with all this Mrs. Rachel found abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen window, knitting “cotton warp” quilts--she had knitted sixteen of them, as Avonlea housekeepers were wont to tell in awed voices--and keeping a sharp eye on the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up the steep red hill beyond. Since Avonlea occupied a little triangular peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with water on two sides of it, anybody who went out of it or into it had to pass over that hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of Mrs. Rachel’s all-seeing eye. Keep reading →

About this story

Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, an elderly brother and sister on Prince Edward Island, ask an orphanage to send them a boy to help on their farm. By mistake they get Anne Shirley, a red-haired eleven-year-old who talks without stopping and has an imagination that gets her into trouble. The book follows her first years in the village of Avonlea.

L. M. Montgomery, a Canadian writer, published it in 1908 and it was a success at once. She went on to write several sequels. It is a warm, funny book about a girl who is clever and awkward and learning to belong, and the island’s fields, orchards and shore are drawn so well that readers still travel there to see them.

Themes: Belonging, imagination, family, growing up
Good for: Readers who like warm, character-led books; a first long novel for young readers
Worth noticing: What each of the Cuthberts thinks about Anne at the start and how each changes.

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