Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908

Between 1907 and 1908, while Anne of Green Gables was making its way toward publication, Montgomery was doing what had paid her bills for years: placing short fiction in North American magazines. Twenty-four of those pieces are collected here. Courtship drives many of them, and around it sit family quarrels that outlast their causes, aunts with immovable opinions, and young women weighing comfort against affection. The opening story sends Katherine from her country home to a wealthy half-sister in Montreal, where she measures that new life against the country doctor she grew up beside. Anne herself turns up as well: one entry is the Green Gables chapter in which shy Matthew sets out to get her a dress with puffed sleeves, printed on its own in 1908.