• Anne of Green Gables (1908) •
Incorporated actual events:
1) A girl is accidentally sent to an elderly couple instead of the requested boy.
2) "What is the name of that geranium on the window-sill, please? May I call it bonny?" (Chaper 4)
"There wasn't any school, so I amused myself by repotting all my geraniums. Dear things, how I love them! The "mother" of them all is a matronly old geranium called "bonny."
3) "When I lived with Mrs. Thomas she had a bookcase in her sitting room with glass doors. There weren't any books in it...I used to pretend that my reflection in it was another little girl who lived in it. I called her Katie Maurice, and we were very intimate. I used to talk to her by the hour, especially on Sunday, and tell her everything. Katie was the comfort and consolation of my life." (Chapter 8)
"In our sitting-room there had always been a big book-case used as a china cabinet. In each door was a large oval glass, dimly reflecting the room. When I was very small each of my reflections in these glass doors were "real folk" to my imagination. The one in the left-hand door was Katie Maurice, the one in the right-hand Lucy Gray...Katie Maurice was a little girl like myself, and I loved her dearly. I would stand before that door and prattle to Katie for hours, giving and receiving confidences."
4) " There are two lines in particular that just thrill me. 'Quick as the slaughtered squadrons fell/In Midian's evil day.' don't know what `squadrons' means nor `Midian,' either, but it sounds so tragical." (Chapter 11)
"I was only nine when those lines thrilled my very soul as I recited them in Sunday School...to this day they give me a mysterious pleasure and a pleasure quite independent of their meaning."
5) "I solemnly swear to be faithful to my bosom friend, Diana barry, as long as the sun and moon shall endure." (Chapter 12)
"I remember that Maggie Abbott and I swore eternal friendship as Anne and Diana did...Amanda and I also once wrote out two "notes of Promise", vowing everlasting faith, had them witnessed by two of the schoolgirls, and finished them up with a red seal."
6) "When I saw a real diamond in a lady's ring one day I was so disappointed I cried. Of course, it was very lovely but it wasn't my idea of a diamond. " (Chapter 13)
"Anne's idea that diamonds looked like amethysts was one of mine...I pictured to myself a beautiful stone of living purple. When Uncle Chester brought Aunt Hattie to see us after their marriage I saw the little diamond in her ring and I was much disappointed. "It wasn't my idea of a diamond" - well many things in life and in the world have not been like my idea of them!"
7) "You don't know what it is to be awakened out of a sound sleep, after a long and arduous journey, by two great girls coming bounce down on you" (Chapter 19)
The scene where Anne and Diana jump into bed on poor Miss barry was suggested to me by a story father told me of how he and two other boys had jumped into bed on an old minister in the spare room at Uncle John Montgomery's long ago. I worked it up into a short story, published early in my career in Golden Days, then used the idea later on in my book.
8) "Diana and I just imagined the wood was haunted. All the places
around here are so--so--COMMONPLACE. We just got this up for our own
amusement. We began it in April.
A haunted wood is so very romantic, Marilla.Oh, Marilla, I wouldn't go through
the Haunted Wood after dark now for anything. I'd be sure that white things
would reach out from
behind the trees and grab me." (Chapter 20)
"The Haunted Wood was a harmless, pretty spruce grove in the field below the orchard. We considered that all our haunts were too commonplace, so we invented this for our own amusement. None of us really believed at first, that the grove was haunted, or that the mysterious "white things" which we pretended to see flitting through it at dismal hours were aught but the creations of our own fancy."
7) "Mercy on us, Anne, you've flavored that cake with anodyne liniment." (Chapter 21)
"The notable incident of the liniment cake happened when I was teaching school in bideford and boarding at the Methodist parsonage there. Its charming mistress flavoured a layer cake with anodyne liniment one day (just as it happened in the story)...A strange minister was there to tea that night. He ate every crumb of his piece of cake...Possibly he imagined it was simply some new-fangled flavouring.
8) "I'm in two dialogues--`The Society for the Suppression of Gossip' and `The Fairy Queen.'" (Chapter 24)
"The dialogues which the girls had in their concerts 'The Society for the Suppression of Gossip" and "The Fairy Queen" were old stand-bys of schooldays...I was the Fairy Queen, being thought fitted for the part by reason of my long hair which I wore crimped and floating over my shoulders from a wreath of pink tissue roses."
9) "I've just thought of a plan, Diana. Let you and me have a story club all our own and write stories for practice." (Chapter 26)
"The story club was suggested by a little incident of one summer long ago when Jamie Simpson, Amanda Macneill, and I all wrote a story on the same plot...It was the first, and probably the last, time that Jamie and Amada attempted fiction."
10) "I was simply wild to know how it turned out— although I felt sure Ben Hur must win, because it wouldn't be poetical justice if he didn't— so I spread the history open on my desk lid and then tucked Ben Hur between the desk and my knee. I just looked as if I were studying Canadian history, you know, while all the while I was revelling in Ben Hur." (Chapter 30)
"Nate brought me "Undine" to-day and I read it under the lid of my desk while Miss Gordon though I was studying history. It was delicious - "Undine", I mean, not history."
Book Reviews:
"Young or old, boy or girl, Anne of Green Gables is an excellent choice for a read that is both funny and heartwarming."
- Women Writers"Full of humor, love, friendship and tragedy, Anne of Green Gables touches the heart and mind."
- Teen Ink: A Magazine and Book Series Written by Teens for Teens"Anne Shirley is funny, loveable, and at times she sets her world on its head with her antics."
- Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Review
Quiz:
Bibliography:
Montgomery, Lucy Maud. The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career. Fitzhenry & Whiteside
Limited, March 1999.
Montgomery, Lucy Maud; Rubio, Mary and Elizabeth Waterston. The Selected Journals
of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. 1: 1889-1910. Oxford University Press, December
14, 2005.
Montgomery, Lucy Maud; Rubio, Mary and Elizabeth Waterston. The Selected Journals
of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. 2: 1910-1921. Toronto, ON: Oxford University Press,
1987.