Summary
Summary of Anne of the Island
Anne of the Island at a glance
Summary: 8 min to read
- Reading time
- About 5 h 10 min4 h 5 min fast, 6 h 10 min slow
- Length
- 73,600 words41 chapters
- Pages
- 219 pages331 in large print
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1915by L. M. Montgomery
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
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Key ideas
Key idea 1
Anne prepares to leave home
Anne Shirley is eighteen, picking apples with Diana and facing a change she can already feel. She is leaving Green Gables for Redmond College in Kingsport. For a girl who lives through her imagination, the wider world brings a question: what happens when life does not match the dreams she has made for it?
Over four years of college, friendship, ambition and love give that question shape. Anne is not simply going somewhere new. She is beginning to discover how much her hopes can tell her, and how much they can hide.
Key idea 2
Friendship makes a new place familiar
Kingsport does not feel like home at first.
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Key idea 3
A shared house becomes a home
Anne and Priscilla fall in love with Patty's Place as soon as they see it.
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Key idea 4
Care means staying beside someone
During a summer in Avonlea, Anne sees that Ruby Gillis is dangerously thin.
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Key idea 5
Publication tests what Anne values
Anne sets out to write a story worthy of publication, but the responses do not match her hopes.
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Key idea 6
The dream competes with the friend
When Gilbert asks Anne to marry him, she says she cares for him only as a friend.
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Key idea 7
Growing up brings loss and gain
Anne's real island is the childhood she is leaving behind.
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Key idea 8
Humor and sorrow belong together
Montgomery's warm, amused voice keeps jokes close to feeling.
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Key idea 9
Love asks Anne to look again
Anne's college years widen her world through friendship, a shared home and the gradual work of becoming a writer and a woman.
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Who it’s for
You will love this book if you enjoy warm, funny stories of college friends, rented houses, loyal cats and first loves, or if you stand between childhood and grown-up life.
What this book is
What happens when a girl who lives by her imagination meets a world that does not match her dreams? Anne Shirley is eighteen and picking apples with Diana, and she knows everything is about to change. She is leaving Green Gables for Redmond College in Kingsport.
L. M. Montgomery published Anne of the Island in 1915, after readers asked for more of Anne. It follows her through four years of college. You get friendship, ambition and love, told with a lot of laughter.
In this summary
- 1Anne prepares to leave homeFree
- 2Friendship makes a new place familiar
- 3A shared house becomes a home
- 4Care means staying beside someone
- 5Publication tests what Anne values
- 6The dream competes with the friend
- 7Growing up brings loss and gain
- 8Humor and sorrow belong together
- 9Love asks Anne to look again
Anne leaves Green Gables as everything changes
The story opens in early autumn. Anne and Diana Barry rest in the Green Gables orchard, and both feel their childhood closing. Diana wears a new ring, Miss Lavendar has married, and Mrs. Lynde is about to move into the spare room.
Anne is the first girl from Avonlea to try for a degree. Under her joking, she feels the pull of home. On the bridge over the Lake of Shining Waters, Gilbert Blythe lays his hand over hers. Anne snatches it away and chatters all the way home. Something new has crept into their friendship, and she is not sure she wants it there.
Gilbert cheers her with a walk to a wild apple tree in the woods, loaded with fruit though no one planted it. It seems to say that a person can thrive alone among strangers. On the day she leaves, rain falls and Marilla stays brisk and tearless.
Leaving home is a loss, but it is also how Anne begins to grow.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Check yourself
What helps Anne feel at home in Kingsport?
Right. “A new place feels like home once friends and small rituals fill it.”Not quite. “A new place feels like home once friends and small rituals fill it.”
Why does Anne feel mortified by her story's prize?
Right. “Diana secretly entered the story in a prize contest and added a line about Rollings Reliable baking powder.”Not quite. “Diana secretly entered the story in a prize contest and added a line about Rollings Reliable baking powder.”
What can keep Anne from recognizing real love?
Right. “Real love is easy to miss when you are looking for the dream of it.”Not quite. “Real love is easy to miss when you are looking for the dream of it.”
Go deeper: the whole of Anne of the Island
About 5 h 20 min to read.Start freePaperback, hardcover and large print, printed for you at cost, are on their way.Email me when it is printed
Who’s who
- Anne Shirley
- A bright, imaginative young woman who leaves Avonlea for Redmond College and tries to work out what she wants from love and writing.
- Gilbert Blythe
- Anne's old schoolmate and rival, kind and clever, who studies hard at Redmond and quietly hopes she will care for him.
- Philippa Gordon
- Called Phil, a pretty, funny Redmond friend who cannot make up her mind about anything, least of all which suitor to choose.
- Priscilla Grant
- Anne's steady friend from Queen's, who shares her rooms at Redmond and her house at Patty's Place.
- Aunt Jamesina
- Stella's tiny, merry aunt, who keeps house for the girls and insists she is still in her teens.
- Marilla Cuthbert
- Anne's stern, loving guardian at Green Gables, who misses her girl and hides how much.
- Davy Keith
- Anne's young, mischievous ward at Green Gables, who asks endless questions and keeps getting into trouble.
- Roy Gardner
- A rich, handsome Redmond student with dark eyes and poetic compliments, who seems to be everything Anne imagined in a hero.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 73,600 words
- Reading timeAbout 5 h 10 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary; paperback, hardcover and large print at cost
- LanguagesEnglish and 10 other languages
Questions about Anne of the Island
What is Anne of the Island about?
It follows Anne Shirley through four years at Redmond College in Kingsport. She makes new friends, shares a house, tries to write, and learns that love is not always what she imagined.
Do you need to read Anne of Green Gables and Avonlea first?
It helps to know the earlier books, but the story stands on its own. Characters like Marilla, Diana, Gilbert and Mrs. Lynde are introduced in a way that is easy to follow.
Who are Phil, Priscilla and Aunt Jamesina?
Phil and Priscilla are among Anne's closest friends at Redmond. Phil is a witty beauty who cannot make up her mind, Priscilla is Anne's steady chum, and Aunt Jamesina keeps house for them at Patty's Place.
What is Patty's Place?
It is a small white house on Spofford Avenue in Kingsport that Anne and her friends rent in their second year. The name stays with the house, and two china dogs guard its hearth.
When was Anne of the Island written and is it a true story?
L. M. Montgomery published it in 1915 as the third Anne book. It is fiction, but it draws on island scenery and college customs of its time.
Cite this edition
Montgomery, L. M. Anne of the Island. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/anne-of-the-island.
Montgomery, L. M. (2026). Anne of the island. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/anne-of-the-island (Original work published 1915)
Montgomery, L. M. Anne of the Island. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/anne-of-the-island.
@book{montgomery2026anne,
author = {Montgomery, L. M.},
title = {Anne of the Island},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/anne-of-the-island},
note = {First published 1915}
}
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