I’m so glad I live in a world where there…

The exclamation comes at the start of a famous chapter of Anne of Green Gables. October is beautiful at Green Gables: golden birches, crimson maples, wild cherry trees in dark red and bronzy green. One Saturday morning Anne comes dancing in with her arms full of boughs and tells Marilla how glad she is, adding that it would be terrible to skip straight from September to November. Marilla, whose aesthetic sense, the narrator notes, is not noticeably developed, calls the branches “Messy things”: bedrooms were made to sleep in. “Oh, and dream in too, Marilla,” Anne replies. The chapter, “Diana Is Invited to Tea with Tragic Results”, ends in disaster: Anne serves her friend currant wine, thinking it is raspberry cordial.

Lucy Maud Montgomery, who grew up on Prince Edward Island, published the novel in 1908 with a Boston publisher, and it was an immediate success. Anne’s line has since become a favourite autumn quotation.

Anne of Green Gables, Chapter 16 (Anne), 1908

Checked word for word in the work itself.

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