Few characters have captured the imagination of generations of readers quite like Anne Shirley, the spirited redheaded orphan of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s famed 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables. Montgomery was born in 1874 in Canada’s smallest province, Prince Edward Island. Her early life was shaped by loss after the death of her mother and abandonment by her father. Growing up with her grandparents in the quiet beach town of Cavendish, she found solace in books, her idyllic natural surroundings, and her imagination — which, not unlike her famous heroine, saw the extraordinary in the everyday.

Montgomery — who considered the pen names Maud Cavendish and Joyce Cavendish before settling on L.M. Montgomery to disguise her gender — faced several rejections on her most famous manuscript before finding it a home. She went on to publish more than 20 books, 500 short stories, and numerous poetry collections throughout her career. While none held quite the cultural cache of her marquee series, she nonetheless became one of Canada’s most widely read authors. Montgomery died at 67 in 1942; one year later, she was designated a Person of National Historic Significance by the government of Canada.