I'm glad to see someone else make this connection. When I read Jewett in college, I was struck by how much her writing reminded me of Montgomery's--not just for the love of nature, but for the way in which they wrote about people in small New England (Jewett) and Maritime (Montgomery) towns.

I suspect that Montgomery is overlooked precisely because her work is beloved by young women--but she created an enduring character and wrote lyrically about a way of life. Surely that is worth some attention.

I too love that this connection has been made here, as a childhood lover of Montgomery and a grown-up admirer of Jewett. It's always nice to find new-to-you authors that seem both new and oddly familiar. So it's nice too that others have shared that experience with these two authors.

I credit Montgomery's books (not just the Anne series, but the Emily books too and some one-offs) with instilling me with a love of reading outside of my time period. To me those books were as much about finding out how people lived at the time as they were about imagination and growing up. I quickly moved on to Edith Wharton and then just kept going. I'm still hoping to win my nieces over to the Anne series in the hopes they will find a fascination with periods that aren't their own.

I admit that the Anne books got me through a lot of growing up times in my life, including re-reading Anne's House of Dreams as my parents sold my childhood home. I'm glad they're still loved by young girls all over and hope they'll continue to be.