Montgomery used a photograph of Evelyn Nesbit, which she had clipped from New York's Metropolitan Magazine and put on the wall of her bedroom, as the model for the face of Anne Shirley and a reminder of her "youthful idealism and spirituality.

Unfortunately, she arrived by mistake — her sponsors, the siblings Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, wanted to adopt a boy to help them on their farm, but the neighbour with whom they had sent the message was certain they had requested a girl instead.

Matthew quickly became fascinated by the girl's good-hearted spirit, charming enthusiasm, and lively imagination, and wanted her to stay at Green Gables from the very first.

"[4]: 15 Anne has great powers of imagination, fed by books of poetry and romance, and a passion for "romantic" and beautiful names and places.

[4]: 15  Under the White Way of Delight, Anne watches the sun set which is to her a glory where "a painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral aisle".

[4]: 16 Anne initially made a poor impression on the townsfolk of Avonlea with an outburst at the Cuthberts' neighbour, the outspoken gossip Mrs. Rachel Lynde, but this was amended by an equally impassioned apology.

Minnie May had an attack of the croup, which Anne was able to cure with a bottle of ipecac and knowledge acquired while caring for the numerous Hammond twins.

Her grudge persisted even after he saved her from a near-disastrous reenactment of Tennyson's "Lancelot and Elaine" when her leaky boat sank into the pond.

[4]: 17 Immediately after graduating from Avonlea's public school, Anne and Gilbert both went to Queen's Academy in Charlottetown, which trained them for teaching and university studies.

Anne reads some poetry by Virgil, but abandons the book as the beauty of sun-kissed summer day and her coming career as a teacher inspire a sense of happiness and unity with nature.

[4]: 70  The Canadian scholar Elizabeth Waterson noted the "erotic" overtones to the scene of the apple tasting in the Haunted Wood, as sign of Anne's attraction to Gilbert of which she herself is not entirely aware.

[4]: 70  Anne's favourite hangout is Patty's Place, where she and her three best friends spent their evenings by a fireplace with three cats, two china dogs and a pot full of chrysanthemums that light up "through the golden gloom like creamy moons".

[4]: 72  After about a year and a half of courtship, he proposes in the park where they met, but Anne ends their relationship instead, realizing that she does not truly love him and he does not belong in her life.

Upon her return to Avonlea after staying with her friends Paul, Stephen, and Lavendar Irving at Echo Lodge, Anne learns that Gilbert is deathly ill with typhoid fever.

Anne takes a job as a principal at Prince Edward Island's second-largest town, Summerside, while Gilbert completes his three-year medical school course.

[4]: 80  After Anne's loss, she and Leslie bond as the two women share their stories of pain as they "talk it out", leading them to hold hands and declare: "We are both women—and friends forever".

They have a total of seven children between approximately 1895-1900: Joyce (or "Joy") (who dies very soon after her birth at the House of Dreams), James Matthew ("Jem"), Walter Cuthbert, twin girls Anne ("Nan") and Diana ("Di"), Shirley (the youngest son), and Bertha Marilla ("Rilla").

[4]: 209 Anne's children enjoy a happy, even idyllic childhood, spending much of their time playing and adventuring in a nearby hollow they name Rainbow Valley.

[3]: 255  At one point, Anne tries to resume her writing career, publishing a very poetical obituary for a neighbour that is mocked as an "obitchery" by an ignorant, rude newspaper editor, though it is well received by everyone else.

[4]: 81  After Anne recovers, she is involved in various ladies' committees in town, and travels to Europe with Gilbert for an extended tour of the European continent at one point, circa 1906.

The Blythe family, which follows the war closely, soon becomes familiar with far-away places such as Calais, Mons, Lodz, Ypres, Belgrade, Amiens, Prezemysl, Gallipoli, Antwerp and Kut al Amara.

"Mrs. Dr. Blythe", as she is often referred to, is a well-known, oft-discussed figure in Glen St. Mary, who is loved by some, though other residents express small-minded jealousy or envy of both Anne and her family.

In The Blythes Are Quoted (published in an abridged format as The Road to Yesterday and in a restored, unabridged edition in 2009), Anne is a peripheral character as a grandmother with several grandchildren, at least three of whom are preparing to enlist in the Canadian army during the opening days of World War II.

She was played by Mary Miles Minter in Anne of Green Gables (1919) a silent film directed by William Desmond Taylor and released by Paramount Pictures.

[10]: 666  Having won their independence in the Revolutionary War, for Americans in the early 20th century it was almost incomprehensible that people in English-Canada should want to be part of the British empire, which gave Canada the image of a very conservative society in the United States in this era.

Alongside the militarism of the educational system went a mood of marked xenophobia and outright racism, with Japanese teachers during World War II telling their students that the Anglo-American "white devils" were cannibals whose favourite food was Asians.

[28] Much of the appeal of Akage no An lies in her ability to rise above any situation due to her pluck and her willingness to challenge "that most formidable of Japanese dragons, the bossy older matron.

Hanako to Anne, which aired in 2014, was a great rating success, getting an average of 22% viewership in the Kanto region (the most populous part of Japan), and caused a doubling of Japanese tourists to Prince Edward Island.

"[32] In 2014, the Japanese diplomat Eiji Yamamoto told a journalist from the Toronto Star: "Even though she's an orphan, Anne is a free spirit, she says anything she wants.

"[33] The Canadian scholar Janice Kulyk Keefer noted the character of Shirley as depicted in film and television is sanitised compared to the book, writing: Death, the bloody laws of nature, the tyranny of adults, violence-all poison the sweetness of ... Arcadia.