Anne of the Island - Definition and Overview

Anne Shirley, drawing inspired by Isao Takahata's 1979 animation

Anne Shirley is a fictional character from the novel Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

There is also a Hollywood actress named Anne Shirley. This was a stage name, which she adopted after playing the fictional Anne in a film version.

Montgomery reportedly got the inspiration for the character of Anne after reading a newspaper article about a Canadian couple who were greatly expecting to adopt a boy orphan but received Anne instead.

According to the story, Anne is a young orphan who is sent to live with an elderly bachelor named Matthew Cuthbert and his sister Marilla. Her parents, Walter and Bertha Shirley, died of typhoid fever. Anne was orphaned as a newborn. The setting is the fictional town of Avonlea, Prince Edward Island, around the turn of the 20th century. The young Anne is described as red-haired and freckled with a wild imagination and intelligent vocabulary. Her creative intellect is usually the center of many of the adventures she encounters.

Many sequels came about after the success of Anne of Green Gables. They follow Anne as she matures into a young woman. The life of Anne is told in the following bibliography:

• Anne of Green Gables (1908)
• Anne of Avonlea (1909)
• Anne of the Island (1915)
• Anne's House of Dreams (1917)
• Rainbow Valley (1919)
• Rilla of Ingleside (1921)
• Anne of Windy Poplars (1936)
• Anne of Ingleside (1939)

External links

• Anne of Green Gables (http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/People/rgs/anne-table.html) HTML version
• Anne of Avonlea (http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/People/rgs/avon-table.html) Online text