Stern and severe in her Calvinist thrift and discipline, she considers feelings of warmth and tenderness almost shameful things, things to be overcome or at least hidden. When he thought of that rapt light being quenched in her eyes he had an uncomfortable feeling that he was going to assist at murdering something – much the same feeling that came over him when he had to kill a lamb or calf or any other innocent little creature. By the time they get home to Green Gables farm, Matthew hasn’t the heart to tell her she must be sent back to the orphanage. And he falls right in love with her imagination and her spirit, right there in an open buggy on the road to Avonlea. So he drives her home and listens to her talk, murmuring “Well now, I dunno” now and then when an answer seems required. He is too tongue-tied to tell her she isn’t wanted. In a bizarre mixup involving an adoption by proxy, a boat, and a train, poor Matthew is surprised to find a redheaded girl waiting for him at the station. They decide to adopt a boy to help them around the farm, and to take over when they get too old to work. Bounced from one foster family to another, each of whom treated her as hired help, she has at last landed in a bleak, city orphanage in her native Nova Scotia.Īlong come a shy old bachelor farmer named Matthew Cuthbert and his spinster sister Marilla. But she’s had a rough first eleven years or so. Sweet-natured, cheerful, vivacious – well, let’s be honest, she’s downright chatty – Anne has an eye for beauty and a vibrant inner life full of quirky imaginings. When we first meet Anne, she is a tiny, thin, pale orphan with bright red hair in braids. From the first moment she appears, Anne is a delightful companion for the imagination of any child, or any adult who still has one. In its first hundred years of existence, it has become firmly established as a classic of children’s literature. Set in the tiny years of the 20th century, in the tiny Canadian province of Prince Edward Island, on a farm near the (fictitious) tiny town of Avonlea, Anne of Green Gables is the most popular book in the series.

Purchase hereīetween 19, Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote seven books about an imaginative, talkative, high-spirited heroine named Anne Shirley, beginning with this one.

Lm montgomery's anne of green gables