Anne of Green Gables, Chapters One and Two

In which Mrs. Rachel Lynde is nosy, Marilla Cuthbert is brisk, Matthew Cuthbert is awkward, and the as-yet-unnamed girl is terribly excited, and in which our narrator gets to talk very fast.



There are illustrations from the original printing, attributed to M.A. and W.A.J. Claus, but only eight for the entire book. None of them go with these two chapters -- except one of them is technically the frontispiece, but depicts a scene from much later, so I'll be including it there -- so all I've got for you is a couple of quick notes: The "Barnado [sic] boy" Marilla is referring to would be one of the Barnardo boys or "Home children," poor boys shipped over from England as essentially indentured servants. The girl's dress is made from wincey, a material that was cheap, warm, and tough, but coarse and definitely not pretty. I suppose we can also include the term "orphan asylum" to the list of things you don't hear much anymore, but I'm supposing you all can figure out its meaning on your own.

You know what, just to keep the visual interest up, any time there are no illustrations to go with a given installment, I'll post the covers of different editions of the book. Up there, then, we're starting out with the cover to the original 1908 edition of Anne of Green Gables. While not credited in the book itself, this original cover portrait was apparently the work of one George Gibbs [PDF link].

In other news, I feel I must apologize on behalf of the year 1908 to the Irish, the French, and the Arab nations. They... didn't know any better, I guess?


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!