I had a strange feeling when I sat down to do my work. Some interest seemed to return to life. The discovery that I may still be able to work heartens me. …

Monday, May 6, 1935

I began spade work on my new Anne book and worked three hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. It is a pretty stiff “stint” but I must keep it up, if I am to finance this family alone.

Saturday, June 15, 1935

I finished the spade work on the incidents in the new Anne today.

Monday, Aug. 12 1935

Today I began to write Anne of Windy Willows – wrote fifteen pages and to my relief enjoyed it. As soon as I give my characters their names they come alive for me and I am interested in their doings and sayings.

Friday Aug. 23 1935

Yesterday was cool and fine and I had had a good sleep. So I wrote five hours pleasurably. I have four chapters of Anne done. I am finding it easier than I thought to get back into the atmosphere of the old Anne stories. And it seems like going back home.

Sunday, September 15, 1935

A quiet week, pleasant on the whole… I have eight chapters of Anne done.

Friday, Nov. 8, 1935

I wrote an Anne chapter today and really enjoyed it. It seemed like escaping back into the past.

Monday, Nov. 25, 1935

I finished Anne of Windy Willows today. I have enjoyed writing it. I think I recaptured the old atmosphere reasonably well but that is one of the things a writer cannot judge for herself.

Saturday, Jan 11 1936

I have had much discussion with Stokes over the title of the new Anne book. I named it Anne of Windy Willows. McClelland approved. But Stokes said it was too much like the title of Kenneth Grahame’s classical fairy story The Wind in the Willows. I think this is a foolish objection but I have given in and the book is to be called Anne of Windy Poplars. It is not nicely alliterative as the other was but I fancy it makes little difference one way or another.

Tuesday, Aug. 18, 1936

Have been fighting off one of my bad colds for two days. It kept me from sleeping last night. I lay wake and heard Stuart across the hall chuckling continuously over Windy Willows! He says it is one of my best. Strange!

Thursday, Aug. 20, 1936

The Daily Sketch – an English newspaper – came today with a review of Windy Willows and gave it four stars for “excellent.” And a “fan” letter says:
“May one who has for years rushed to secure each of your heavenly fights to the world of a book – such a book! — now burst forth into a long repressed shout of gratitude and joy? I have just finished Anne of Windy Poplars. I have laughed till I wept over “Elijah the Tidbit” (I’m sure I’ll laugh in heaven when I think of that) and the husband who gnawed bones and buried them till “his wife felt it” – just that.

“I have wandered with Anne where the fairies dance – shared her triumphs, her woes and her love. Truly, truly, I believe this book is the crowning joy, the perfect exquisite offering of your inexpressible powers.

“I call your books heavenly gifts because to me whatever is so elusively exquisitely beautiful belongs to that Perfect Life and World.

“What an inner life must be yours of beauty, delight and tenderness! And what God gave us in endowing you with power to express the unutterable.

“I can never tell you the debt of gratitude I feel for so enriching, enchanting, illuminating life’s every days.”

I must try to remember this letter when the dark days come on which I am shut out of my “inner life of beauty.” There have been so many of them these past six years.

March 1, 1936 letter to G. B. MacMillan

I have just finished and handed over to the published a new Anne book – “Anne of Windy Poplars”!! My publishers were most anxious for me to write it – they thought it would be a good commercial venture after the film. So very unwillingly I agreed. At first I thought I could never “get back” into that series. It seemed to belong to another world. But after the plunge I began to find it possible – nay to enjoy it – as if I really had found my way back to those golden years before the world went mad. I wrote a story of the three years between “Anne of the Island” and “Anne’s House of Dreams” when she was teaching in Summerside. I don’t know whether I have succeeded in recapturing the old spirit and atmosphere or not, even in part. I shall await your verdict on that point with much interest. The book will be out next fall. I wrote it in five months – a stunt that I have not done since I wrote “Green Gables.” Of course, I have more time for writing now, but even so it was a rather breathless performance. It is my 19th book!!

December 27, 1936 letter to G. B. MacMillan

Thanks for the clipping from the Newsagent containing its comments on the Daily Mirror’s choice of Anne as the romantic book of the month. In regard to the “bits” it quotes from Anne, here is an amusing chit. I sent one [manuscript] of the story to Harraps and one to Stokes, my New York. publishers. The Stokes readers thought that some of the incidents mentioned in Anne’s walk through the churchyard and later on in her visit to “Tomgallon House” were “too gruesome.” and advised they be cut out. So accordingly I cut. Always before the English editions were printed from the U.S. plates and so I supposed this book would be, too, and did not think it necessary to tell Harrpas about it. But for the first time they made their own plates. So all these “gruesome things” are in the English edition and nobody seems to have suffered. But the joke is that one of these bits is quoted in the Newsagent’s article as being one of the amusing things in the book!!!

My own title was “Anne of Windy Willows.” But Stokes thought this titte too reminiscent of Kenneth Grahame’s fairy animal story “The Wind in the Willows.”… “I thought this very far-fetched but suggested “Poplars” in place of “Willows.” But Harraps scouted the idea and insisted on retaining “Willows.” Mr. Harrap said the English people knew very little about poplars and all about willows!! So there you are.

Sat., Sept 23, 1938

I had another letter today from a woman who had just read Windy Poplars. She said in conclusion “Thank you for the simple charm of people, humor and quaintness – for a wisp of fairyland – for the scarlet, purple and blue!”

When dreariness and fear threaten to overwhelm me I shall remember this letter and say to myself, “Take heart my child. As long as you can bring a little delight or comfort into the lives of others life is worth living. And there are countless lives waiting for you yet in the years of eternity and in stars yet unborn.”