In total, L. M. Montgomery wrote eight novels about the adventures of Anne. They last from Anne’s arrival at the Bright River railroad station and meeting with Matthew Cuthbert in [mumble mumble] to her daughter’s acceptance of her first marriage proposal in 1919. They cover a long, eventful life. Anne grows up, falls in love, quarrels, falls in love again, breaks an engagement, gets engaged again, gets married, leaves Avonlea, has children. She suffers loss. She meets new friends. She has a fulfilling life in the town of Glen St. Mary. All in all, she does enough to fill eight books. More, however, Montgomery wrote any number of any books, more than a few of which intersected with Anne or Avonlea or both in some way.

Now, not all of her books involve Anne. The Blue Castle, one of her few adult books, is set in its entirety in Ontario. (It’s a love story between a repressed “old maid” who has broken out of her shell and the town reprobate.) Emily of New Moon, Pat of Silver Bush, and The Story Girl are all series set in their entirety on Prince Edward Island that have no connection with Anne. Kilmeny of the Orchard (another adult novel), The Tangled Web (ditto), and Magic for Marigold are all single novels on the Island with no connection. Jane of Lantern Hill goes back and forth between Toronto and the Island in the early ’30s and has no Anne connection.

And, sure, that’s a lot. More of her novels are not connected to Anne and her family than are. On the other hand, Montgomery also published literally dozens of short stories, now available in several omnibus editions. Most famous are Chronicles of Avonlea and Further Chronicles of Avonlea, of course. But there are several others, including her eeriest work, Among the Shadows: Tales From the Darker Side, that link to Avonlea and Anne. That last includes ghost stories and similar.

From the beginning, Avonlea was peopled with families, old maids, and bachelors. Anne moved in with the Cuthberts, the last of an established family; there are several similar families listed. The Blythes, of course, and the Barrys, but there are also literally dozens of Pyes and Spurgeons and so forth. Jane Andrews, one of Anne’s best friends, has an older brother who woos Anne and is soundly rejected. There are many, many characters already. Then several more families and assorted singles were added in the additional books. Montgomery may have genuinely created enough characters to populate an entire town.

Even when Anne moves to Glen St. Mary, the short stories moved with her. The latest-set story Montgomery wrote, to my knowledge, “A Commonplace Woman,” references the Blythes, including one who is a pilot getting ready for World War II. Another story written around the same time involves Anne’s housekeeper, Susan Baker, sitting with another family’s housekeeper before a wedding that is clearly in the very early 1920s. Anne and the others moved through well-populated worlds, and it’s quite clear that Montgomery saw no reason not to do more with her already-built worlds.

Readers familiar with Montgomery’s work primarily through television are, no doubt, curious about Road to Avonlea, the ’90s series about the adventures of the King family of Avonlea. So yeah, about them—they’re actually originally the King family of . . . somewhere on PEI. It’s never actually established, though no Avonlea characters have appeared. Surely they would, if it were Avonlea. The family structure is substantially changed from the original books—The Story Girl and The Golden Road, if you’re curious—and several characters have vanished entirely. Some of the stories are adapted from various Chronicles of Avonlea stories; many, many more are invented entirely for the show.

Anne herself goes through enough story to fill eight books. But that’s not all the story to be told. If you like Anne, you can delve deeper into the people around her and discover the rich inner lives of the various people who live in Avonlea and Glen St. Mary. But of course there’s no reason to stop there; Montgomery’s work stretches to Ontario and back. There is a lot to read, should you be interested in discovering more of her work.

Help me afford The Blythes Are Quoted; consider supporting my Patreon or Ko-fi!