Verso Pages

These back-of-page seemingly random, out-of-order scrap pieces are drafts of Montgomery’s early short stories and poems. Some were already published when she drafted Anne in 1905 and 1906, and others were probably typed up and kept elsewhere. Some verso scrap sheets show early experiments: “A Baking of Gingersnaps” (1895) was her first published short story; she tests the pen names Maud Cavendish and Maud Eglinton. After Chapter 15, she started writing Anne front-to-back. Why did she switch from scrap pages to fresh sheets?

View an index of the verso contents here, or explore the full collection of Verso pages below:

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Chapter 31 Where The Brook and River Meet.

Anne had her “good” summer and enjoyed it whole-heartedly. She and Diana fairly lived out of doors, revelling in all the delights that Lover’s Lane and the Dryad’s Bubble and Willowmere and Victoria Island afforded[.] Marilla offered no objection to Anne’s rovings. gypsyings. The Spencervale doctor who had come the night Minnie May had the croup met Anne at the house of a patient one afternoon early in vacation, looked her over sharply, screwed up his mouth, shook his head, and sent a message to Marilla Cuthbert, . by another person. It was:- “Keep that red-headed girl of yours in the open air all summer and don’t let her read books until she gets more spring into her step.” This message frightened Marilla wholesomely. She read Anne’s death-
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thrilling to preach splendid sermons and stir your hearer’s [sic] hearts. Why can’t women be ministers, Marilla? I asked Mrs. Lynde that and she was shocked and said it would be a scandalous thing. She said there might be female ministers in the states and she believed there was but thank goodness we hadn’t go[t] to that stage yet in Canada yet and she hoped we never would. But I don’t see why. I think women would make splendid minsters. When there is a social to be got up or a church tea or anything else to raise money the women have to turn in and do the work. I’m sure Mrs. Lynde can pray every bit as well as Superintendent Bell and I’ve no doubt she could preach too with a little practice.”

“Yes. I believe she could,” said Marilla drily. “She does plenty of unofficial preaching as it is. Nobody has much

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I sometimes think she’d have more of an influence for good, ^as you say yourself, if she didn’t keep nagging people to do right. There should have been a special commandment against nagging. But there, I shouldn’t talk so. Rachel is a good Christian woman and she means well. There isn’t a kinder soul in Avonlea.” and she never shirks her share of work[.]”

“I’m very glad you feel the same,” said Anne decidedly. “It’s so encouraging. I shan’t worry so much over that after this. But I daresay there’ll be other things to worry me. They keep coming up new all the time—things to perplex you, you know. You settle one question and there’s another right after. There are so many things to be thought over and decided when you’re beginning to grow up. It’s a It keeps me busy all the time thinking

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haunt Anne through the waking hours of that winter, Sunday afternoons inclusive, to the almost entire exclusion of moral and theological problems. When Anne had bad dreams she found herself staring miserably at pass lists of the entrance exams. [sic] where Gilbert Blythe’s name was blazoned at the top and in which hers did not appear at all.

But it was a jolly, busy, happy swift-flying winter. School work was as interesting, class rivalry as absorbing, as of yore. New worlds of thought, ^feeling and ambition, fres,h, fascinating fields of unexplored knowledge seemed to be opening out before Anne’s eager eyes.

“Hills peeped o’er o’er hills and Alps

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were sleigh drives and skating frolics galore.

Between times Anne grew, shooting up so rapidly that Marilla was astonished one day, when they were standing side by side, to find the girl was taller than herself.

“Why, Anne, how you’ve grown!” she said, almost unbelievingly. A sigh followed on the words. Marilla felt a queer regret over Anne’s inches. The child she had loved learned to love had vanished ^somehow and here was this tall, serious-eyed girl of 15, with the thoughtful brows and the proudly poised little head, in her place. Marilla loved the girl as much as she had loved the child but she was conscious of a queer, ^sorrowful sense of

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be built to Carmody by that time[.]”

“It won’t be the same thing as having here her here all the time,” sighed Marilla gloomily. S17 “But there – men can’t understand these things.”

There were other changes in Anne no less real than the physical change. For one thing, she became much quieter. Perhaps she thought all the more and dreamed as much as ever, but she certainly talked less. Marilla noticed and commented on this also.

“You don’t chatter half as much as you used to, Anne, nor use half as many big words. What has come over you?”

Anne coloured and laughed a little, as she dropped her book and looked dreamily out of the window where the

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stronger and better. She makes us write all our compositions essays as simply as possible. It was hard at first. I was so used to crowding in all the ^fine big words I could think of – and I thought of any number of them. But I’ve got used to it now and I see it’s so much better.”
T17

“You’ve only two months more before the Entrance,” said Marilla. “Do you think you’ll be able to get through?”

Anne shivered.

I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’ll be all right – and then I get horribly afraid. We’ve studied hard and Miss Stacy has drilled us thoroughly but we mayn’t get through for all that. We’ve each got a stumbling block. Mine is geometry, of course, and Jane’s is Latin and

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