Anne of Windy Poplars

Anne of Windy Poplars was published in 1936, decades after the original trilogy, and Montgomery wrote it to fill in a gap. Chronologically it sits between Anne of the Island and Anne’s House of Dreams, covering the three years Anne spends as principal of Summerside High School while engaged to Gilbert, who is finishing medical school. The book is told largely through Anne’s letters to him.

Summerside is dominated by the Pringles, a powerful local clan who decide immediately that Anne does not belong there. Most of the first year is the slow war of attrition between Anne and the Pringle matriarch Aunt Mouser. The other strand of the book follows Anne boarding at Windy Poplars, a house belonging to two widow sisters, with their cook Rebecca Dew, who narrates her own asides directly to the reader. The epistolary form gives the whole book a different rhythm than the earlier ones. Some readers find it less compelling because of the format. Others love it for the same reason. A late-career visit to a younger Anne, written by a Montgomery who already knew where the character ended up.