High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Anne Shirley is a fictional character introduced in the 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Montgomery wrote in her journal that the idea for Anne`s story came from relatives who, planning to adopt an orphaned boy, received a girl instead. Anne Shirley`s appearance was inspired by a photograph which Montgomery clipped from the Metropolitan Magazine and kept, unaware of the model`s identity as the notorious 1900s Gibson Girl Evelyn Nesbit.