Novel Beginnings: The "Real" Anne of Green Gables

The myths of origin and inspiration surrounding our favorite works of literature are oftentimes just as fascinating and magnetic as the works themselves.  Here's an account of how one of our personal all-time-favorite books came into being.

First edition cover of Anne of Green Gables (1908).

Linked from Wikipedia.

On 16 August 1907, Lucy Maud Montgomery recorded in her journal that her first novel, Anne of Green Gables, had just been accepted for publication by the L.C. Page Company of Boston.  She reminisced about the agony she had felt at trying to begin the book: "I have always hated beginning a story.  When I get the first paragraph written I feel as though it were half done" (Selected Journals, Vol. 1, p. 330).  Then she hit upon her inspiration:

"I have always kept a notebook in which I jotted down, as they occurred to me, ideas for plots, incidents, characters, and descriptions.  Two years ago in the spring of 1905 I was looking over this notebook in search of some suitable idea for a short serial I wanted to write for a certain Sunday School paper and I found a faded entry, written many years before: - “Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for a boy.  By mistake a girl is sent them.”  I thought this would do.  I began to block out the chapters, devise incidents and “brood up” my heroine."

(Selected Journals, Vol. I, p. 330)

 The "faded entry" did not record a fleeting spark of imagination specifically conjured as a future plot, but rather an actual incident in the life of Maud and her family, as the writer detailed in a later journal entry on 27 January 1911: “The idea of getting a child from an orphan asylum was suggested to me years ago as a possible germ for a story by the fact that Pierce Macneill got a little girl from one, and I jotted it down in my notebook” (Selected Journals, Vol. II, p. 40).  "The "elderly couple" she noted was in fact Pierce Macneill (the cousin of LMM's grandfather) and his wife, Rachel, who lived directly across from the Green Gables property in Cavendish, PEI.  The childless couple had applied to adopt an orphan boy in 1892 to help out with the farm chores; their neighbors John and Annie Clark did the same.  But instead of two boys, the two sets of unsuspecting adoptive parents found a five-year-old boy and his three-year-old sister awaiting them at the train station.  When the Macneills contacted the orphanage about the mistake, they were told that because there were so few boys, and because they were hesitant to separate the siblings, they had sent the little girl with her brother instead.  Like Matthew and Marilla, Pierce and Rachel decided to keep and officially adopt the little girl, who they named Ellen and who took their surname.  Despite attempts by multiple researchers over the past twenty years to trace her birth name and family, no details about Ellen's origins have been found.  Even her place of birth has been questioned, with John Willoughby suggesting that Ellen and her brother were "Home Children" brought from England and Irene Gammel more recently arguing that the siblings more likely had been born in Nova Scotia. 

Ellen Macneill, ca. 1895.

Photo courtesy of Ruth Gallant and linked from Ryerson University.

Maud claimed that while the events surrounding Ellen's arrival had provided the impetus for the story of Anne of Green Gables, the character of Anne herself was nothing like the Macneill orphan.  "There is no resemblance of any kind between Anne and Ellen Macneill who is one of the most hopelessly commonplace and uninteresting girls imaginable" (Selected Journals, Vol. II, p. 40).  Either way, it's easy to see how the happy ending of the Macneill orphan mix-up would have started the wheels of Maud's vivid imagination turning.  As Mrs. Spenser said to Marilla, "I call it positively providential."


For more information on Ellen Macneill and the composition of Anne of Green Gables, take a look at:

- John Willoughby's Ellen is the only extended account of Ellen's life
- LMM-Anne.net's Anne of Green Gables "Creation and Publication" page
- The Selected Journals of Lucy Maud Montgomery, edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterson.  There are five total volumes; volume two covers the year of Anne's publication.
- Irene Gammel's new book, Looking for Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed up a Literary Classic.  A preview of the American release of the book (which has an alternate title) can be found here on googlebooks.
- The most comprehensive LMM biography, Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings, by Mary Rubio
- LMM's autobiography, The Alpine Path, which includes her account of her writing career

Sewing for the Literary-Minded

Just before Christmas, while doing a little online holiday shopping, I discovered that the Sullivan Films shop offers for sale a pattern from Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story movie. It is Anne's wedding dress, a simple yet elegant gown inspired by a 1916 Canadian catalog wedding dress (because, if you recall, Anne's hurried wedding in the film necessitated the purchase of something pre-made).

My version of this dress will not be for a wedding; instead, I'm thinking perhaps either black (the sheer sleeves would look so pretty!) or a pastel color to make it a pretty springy outfit. With a hat, of course. Must have a hat.

I emailed the company to inquire if there were currently any plans to release any other patterns of costumes from the two earlier films, but they replied in the negative. Perhaps if we bombard them with inquiries so that they know there's plenty of interest, we can stir something up! I know I, for one, would love to get my hands on a pattern for Anne's "Gibson Girl" dress from Anne of Avonlea (er, Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel, if you prefer!), or that gorgeous gown she wears to the opera on her visit to Boston, or...well, I'd be happy with whatever they could offer!

Because of the timeline shift in the first Anne film, Kevin Sullivan had to bring the third up to the period of World War I. In the movie world, then, Anne and Gilbert don't marry until 1915, while in the book (Anne's House of Dreams), their wedding takes place around 1890, and it is not until the eighth volume in the series (Rilla of Ingleside) that L.M. Montgomery reaches the war years, by which time the main character has become Anne and Gilbert's youngest daughter.

Lucy Maud Montgomery (Anne's creator) and Ewan Macdonald were married on 5 July 1911, closer in date to the movie Anne and Gilbert than their original literary counterparts. We visited Prince Edward Island several times back in the mid-90s, and saw LMM's wedding gown on display at her birthplace in New London, and also visited the parlor room where she was married at her cousins the Campbells' home at Park Corner. Descendants of LMM still own the Park Corner property and permit wedding ceremonies to be conducted before the very same fireplace where LMM stood on her wedding day (and yes, all of the original furniture is still there, too). All three years we visited the house, there were couples having wedding pictures taken on the grounds.

LMM's wedding gown on display at the LMM Birthplace. 

Photo linked from Reverand Sam's flickr photostream.

LMM recorded in her journal that "my wedding dress was of white-silk crepe de soie with tunic of chiffon and pearl bead trimming - and of course the tulle veil and orange blossom wreath."  She also wore "Ewan's present - a necklace of of amethysts and pearls.  My bouquet was of white roses and lilies of the valley" (The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vol II, pgs. 64-7).  Interestingly, these same materials - white silk de soie with a chiffon overdress decorated with bead trimming - were also used to create Anne's movie wedding dress, though in a much more "modern" style.

Photograph of LMM's wedding gown.  The gown is

the property of the LMM Birthplace.  The photo is

copyrighted by the LMM Institute.

The gown was made by Margaret Bulman of New Glasgow, PEI.  We visited well before the age of digital cameras, and the photos we have are so badly lit you can't make out what's in them, so I've had to link to online images instead.

Montgomery also wrote about the enjoyment she and her Park Corner cousins derived from the arrival of her trousseau, which the hard-earned funds from her newly-published novels had enabled her to order all the way from Toronto and Montreal. She modelled them proudly as her cousin snapped photographs, and later inserted the photos into one of her scrapbooks. Swatches of some of the fabrics were also carefully saved there, along with some flowers from her bouquet. Click here for a brief but very neat little video from the L.M. Montgomery Institute showing the scrapbook page.  I remember seeing some of LMM's scrapbooks on display at her New London Birthplace and at the PEI Confederation Centre of the Arts, but I don't recall seeing this particular one. Guess I'll just have to go back again!

Some of the photos are below, and she described the outfits thus in her journal: "My trousseau, which I had made mainly in Toronto and Montreal, began to arrive and we were all interested in that.  My things were pretty...These are snaps the girls took of some of my dresses.  My suit was of steel gray cloth, with gray chiffon blouse and gray hat trimmed with a wreath of tiny rosebuds.  My long wrap was of gray broadcloth.  Besides the dresses 'illustrated' I had a linen dress, a pink muslin, one of white embroidery, and several odd waists" (The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vol II, pgs. 64-6).  If only they had survived as well as the wedding gown!

More images of the trousseau can be see in The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. II, pg. 65.

For further information on all of these items, visit the Confederation Centre's "L.M. Montgomery's Wedding Clothes" page.  The page is part of a larger project based on a recent exhibit of LMM's scrapbooks, called "Picturing a Canadian Life: L.M. Montgomery's Personal Scrapbooks and Book Covers."  If you're interested in taking a closer look at some of the scrapbooks (which intriguingly contain many swatches and fashion clippings), check out Imagining Anne: The Island Scrapbooks of L.M. Montgomery, the book that accompanies the exhibit.  Further information on the life and writings of L.M. Montgomery can be found through the L.M. Montgomery Institute.