The manuscript for the novel “Anne of Green Gables” has been added to a United Nations register that highlights Canadian heritage.
The work by Lucy Maud Montgomery has been included in the Canada Memory of the World Register, administered by the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, in honour of the author’s 150th birthday.
Included in the register are 475 handwritten pages by Montgomery and an additional 96 pages of her notes that record additions to the renowned text.
Montgomery was born on Prince Edward Island on Nov. 30, 1874, and drew inspiration from her childhood home in the town of Cavendish for the setting of the novel.
Since it was published in 1908, “Anne of Green Gables,” which recounts the adventures of an 11-year-old orphan, has drawn thousands of tourists to the Island each year.
The only other entry from the Maritimes in the memory register are court documents from the Nova Scotia trial of Viola Desmond, a businesswoman and civil rights advocate who was arrested in 1946 for sitting in a “whites only” section of a movie theatre.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 29, 2024.