Literary Relations: Anne Shirley and Her American Cousins

This article examines the similarities between L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables and Kate Douglas Wiggin’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. It raises a number of questions about the Canadianness of Montgomery’s best loved novel and considers the author’s literary indebtedness to Wiggin and other American authors including Gene Stratton-Porter and Sarah Orne Jewett. It concludes with the argument that even though statements regarding Anne’s originality and distinctive Canadianness are problematic, as a literary work, Anne has real strengths that make it more than a simple formula story. Anne of Green Gables is the work of a consummate storyteller.