Warning: If you have a visual impairment, use the manuscript transcript version including the Lucy Maud Montgomery’s foot notes and contextual annotation references.

L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables Manuscript Scan

Chapter 26

~~394~~ 468

tiful ~~girls~~ maidens called Cordelia ~~Montague~~ Montmorency and Geraldine Seymour who lived in the same village and were devotedly attached to each other. Cordelia was a re[g]al brunette with a coronet of midnight hair and duskly flashing eyes. Geraldine was a queenly blonde with hair like spun gold and velvety purple eyes.”

“I never saw anybody with purple eyes,” said Diana dubiously.

“Neither did I. I just imagined them. I wanted something out of the common. Geraldine had an alabaster brow, too. I’ve found out what an alabaster brow is. That is one of the advantages of being thirteen. You know so much more than you did when you were only twelve.”

“Well, what became of Cordelia and

TEXT ANNOTATION

"Cordelia": The story of Cordelia Montmorency and Geraldine Seymour: Anne has been influenced by Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem "Lady Geraldine’s Courtship," as suggested in the Annotated Anne, p. 280, and possibly by a reading of George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss.

TEXT ANNOTATION

"I never saw anybody with purple eyes": Probably because real violet eyes are rare outside of fiction. Montgomery gave Emily "purplish-grey" eyes and "jet-black hair"—more than a little of the romantic still in that author-spirit.