Anne of the Island characters

Appears from the start

Eighteen and about to leave Avonlea for Redmond College in Kingsport, on the mainland, after two years of teaching. She has kept the imagination and the ready tongue of her childhood and gained a good deal of self-possession, and she is aware that going away will change the village and her friendships in ways she cannot prevent. She writes stories, means to take her degree, and holds firm romantic notions about what love ought to feel like when it comes.

Appears from the start

Anne's old schoolfellow and rival, now bound for Redmond himself, where he intends to work towards medicine. Steady, hard-working, and popular, he has been Anne's good friend since their quarrel ended, and hopes for more than she has so far been willing to see.

Appears from the start

Anne's bosom friend from childhood, who has no wish for college and is quietly settling into the life Avonlea expects of her, with Fred Wright at her side. Comfortable and warm-hearted, she remains the person Anne writes to about everything, though the two lives are beginning to run on different lines.

Appears from the start

The mistress of Green Gables, growing older and no longer able for hard work, who runs the house with Mrs. Rachel Lynde and the twins about her. She parts with Anne for Redmond without a word of complaint and misses her more than she will say.

Appears from the start

Widowed and installed at Green Gables as housekeeper, she manages Marilla, the twins, and a good deal of Avonlea, and delivers her verdict on college for girls without waiting to be asked.

Appears from the start

The orphan boy Marilla has brought up at Green Gables, now nine, still inquisitive and still in trouble, and the author of long, badly spelled letters that carry Avonlea news to Anne at college.

First appears in chapter 4

A pretty, wealthy, and thoroughly frivolous freshman from Bolingbroke whom Anne meets in her first days at Redmond. She cannot decide anything, from a hat to a suitor, keeps a crowd of admirers she takes no more seriously than her hats, and is far cleverer than she pretends. She attaches herself to Anne at once.

First appears in chapter 3

An Avonlea girl and Anne's friend from Queen's days, sensible and companionable, who goes to Redmond in the same year and shares Anne's lodgings and her explorations of Kingsport.

First appears in chapter 10

A Redmond student from a Nova Scotia family, dark-eyed and dryly humorous, who joins Anne's circle and proposes the household arrangement that gives the girls a house of their own.

First appears in chapter 11

Stella's elderly aunt, a small, rosy, white-haired widow of a missionary who comes to keep house for the girls as their chaperone. Tolerant, shrewd, and untroubled by modern notions or by cats, she presides over the household with common sense and a warm hearth.

First appears in chapter 7

An Avonlea girl of Anne's own age, fair and pretty, absorbed since school days in her beaux and her good looks, and now teaching at a country school. Anne has always found her shallow company and is fond of her nonetheless.

First appears in chapter 3

An Avonlea boy who has followed Anne to Redmond, solemn, self-satisfied, and afflicted with prominent eyes and the Sloane manner, entirely certain that his attentions must be welcome.

First appears in chapter 25

A dark, handsome young man of a wealthy Kingsport family, who first speaks to Anne when he shelters her from a rainstorm. He is graceful, well read, and given to paying compliments in the language of poetry, and he answers almost exactly to the hero Anne has imagined since girlhood.

First appears in chapter 26

A striking Kingsport girl from a good family, an acquaintance of Gilbert's sister-in-law's people, who is often seen in Gilbert's company at Redmond social affairs.

First appears in chapter 24

A divinity student in charge of a small mission church near Kingsport, plain-faced, poor, and entirely without polish, but so good and so genuinely amusing that Philippa Gordon's crowd of handsome suitors cannot compete with him.

First appears in chapter 5

Anne's old pupil from Avonlea, now away at school in the United States with his father and stepmother, who writes to her and visits when he can, still full of the fancies that made him her favourite scholar.