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 planned to adopt a boy orphan but received a girl 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. Anne was orphaned as an infant when her parents, Walter and Bertha Shirley, died of typhoid fever. The setting is the fictional town of Avonlea, Prince Edward Island, around the turn of the 20th century. Anne, red-haired and freckled, has an overactive imagination and an impressive vocabulary as well as a temper, all of which influence her adventures. She does well in school, making a best friend in "bosom companion" Diana Barry .

As a teenager, Anne becomes a schoolteacher in her homeown of Avonlea before going to college. She then works as a principal for three years while her fiance, Gilbert Blythe , finishes medical school. After their marriage, Anne and Gilbert have several children: Joy (who dies soon after birth), James Matthew (Jem),Walter, twins Nan and Diana, Shirley and Bertha Marilla ("Rilla") . Rilla is the central chararacter of the last book in the series, Rilla of Ingleside, which takes place against a backdrop of World War I

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 of Windy Poplars (1936)
• Anne's House of Dreams (1917)
• Anne of Ingleside (1939)
• Rainbow Valley (1919)
• Rilla of Ingleside (1921)

External links

• Anne of Green Gables HTML version
• Anne of Avonlea Online text
• Anne Shirley Home Page Your number 1 source for all things Anne!