Anne of Windy Poplars

A Letter-Written Interlude

Anne of Windy Poplars is the fourth book in L. M. Montgomery’s beloved Anne of Green Gables series, and it occupies a particular niche within it: a transitional, episodic interlude that bridges the Anne of the college years in Anne of the Island and the married Anne of Anne’s House of Dreams. It covers the three years during which Anne Shirley, now engaged to Gilbert Blythe but separated from him while he completes his medical training, serves as principal of Summerside High School and boards at a house called Windy Poplars. Much of the book is told through Anne’s letters to Gilbert, an epistolary device that gives it an intimate, conversational charm and that distinguishes it from the more conventionally narrated volumes around it.

Structurally, this is a gentler and more diffuse book than its predecessors. There is no overarching plot to speak of, no single dramatic arc driving toward a climax. Instead, Anne of Windy Poplars unfolds as a series of vignettes — encounters with the people of Summerside, small dramas of the school and the town, the slow winning-over of a community initially wary of the bright young outsider who has arrived to teach their children. The book is a collection of episodes rather than a unified story, and readers who come to it expecting the narrative momentum of Anne of Green Gables may find it slighter and more meandering. Its pleasures are the pleasures of company rather than of plot.

Anne’s Enduring Charm

What carries the book, as it carries the whole series, is Anne herself. Even as an adult, the redheaded orphan who captured generations of readers remains irresistible — warm, imaginative, quick-witted, and possessed of an almost magical gift for seeing the best in people and, in doing so, bringing it out. The central thread of Anne of Windy Poplars, insofar as it has one, is her gradual transformation of Summerside: the prickly relatives at the school, the lonely and the embittered townsfolk, the proud Pringle family who initially resolve to make her tenure miserable. One by one, Anne wins them over, not through cleverness or force but through genuine kindness and an unshakable faith in people’s capacity for good. Montgomery’s enduring theme — that warmth and imagination can transform the world around us — runs through every chapter, and it remains as appealing now as it ever was.

The eccentrics of Summerside are among the book’s chief delights. Montgomery had a real gift for the small lives of provincial people, and Anne of Windy Poplars is full of vivid, funny, tender portraits: the lonely widow, the misunderstood spinster, the children Anne mentors, the proud old families nursing their grudges. She finds genuine depth and humor in these minor figures, and the book’s episodic structure gives her room to linger on them. The letters home, with their wit and their affection, make the reader a confidant of Anne’s inner life, and the intimacy of the form is one of the book’s quiet rewards.

The Costs of the Interlude

It is fair to note what Anne of Windy Poplars lacks. Gilbert, Anne’s fiancé and the romantic anchor of the series, is largely absent — present only as the recipient of her letters, off pursuing his studies — and the romance that animated the earlier books is therefore on hold. The stakes are low throughout; nothing of great consequence happens, and the book’s gentleness can shade into inconsequence. Within the larger arc of the series, this volume can feel minor, a pleasant pause between the more pivotal installments rather than an essential chapter in its own right. Readers eager to reach the married life of Anne’s House of Dreams may experience it as a detour.

There is also the matter of where it falls in the series’ composition. Anne of Windy Poplars was written years after the early books, filling in a gap in Anne’s chronology, and it occasionally shows the slight artificiality of a later addition — a story constructed to occupy a space rather than one that arose naturally from the saga’s forward motion. None of this is fatal, but it does mark the book as a supplement to the main sequence rather than a load-bearing part of it.

A Warm and Welcome Visit

For all that, Anne of Windy Poplars is a genuine pleasure for anyone who loves the series. It offers more time in Anne’s company, more of Montgomery’s gentle wit and warm humanity, and more of the small-town world she rendered so lovingly. Its episodic structure and low stakes make it ideal comfort reading — a book to return to for its charm rather than its drama — and the epistolary intimacy gives it a distinctive flavor among the Anne novels. As the bridge between Anne’s youth and her marriage, it fills an important place in the chronology, and it does so with grace.

It is not the best of the Anne books, and it is not the place to start. But for readers who have followed Anne from Green Gables onward, it is a warm and welcome visit — a charming interlude that asks little and gives generously, in the gentle, humane spirit that has kept these books beloved for over a century.

Final Verdict

Our rating: 4.0/5 — A charming, letter-driven interlude in the Anne saga that trades plot for warmth, wit, and a town full of memorable eccentrics. Lighter and more episodic than its predecessors, with Gilbert mostly offstage, but a genuine pleasure for lovers of the series. Gentle comfort reading at its finest.

Read it after Anne of the Island, then continue with Anne’s House of Dreams.