Mr. Harrison

Mr. Harrison serves as Anne Shirley’s candid adviser on her first major story, Averil’s Atonement. His skepticism stings, but his concrete editorial objections lead Anne to revise the work and test her romantic ambitions against the demands of believable fiction.

Anne’s First Reader

Anne tells Diana Barry that she has confided the story’s heroine, Averil Lester, to only two people: Diana and Mr. Harrison. His initial response has been discouraging: he thinks too much poor writing is being published and had expected something better from Anne after her first year at college. His judgment thus matters to her not as an editor’s formal verdict, but as the response of someone whose expectations she values.

Editorial Standards and Revision

When he reads the manuscript, Mr. Harrison objects first to its abundance of description. Anne is attached to the florid passages, but accepts that he has a point and rewrites the story three times to pare it down. She keeps the sunset, the one descriptive passage she cannot bring herself to remove, even after cutting the others.

His criticism goes beyond style. He questions Anne’s choice to place the story among wealthy city people, whose lives she does not know well, and suggests setting it in Avonlea under changed names. Anne considers her home dear but not romantic enough for fiction; Mr. Harrison counters that Avonlea has had romances and tragedies of its own. He also challenges the story’s elevated, unrealistic speech, pointing to a scene where Dalrymple talks at length without allowing the girl to answer. In his view, a character who behaved that way in real life would drive her listener away. His advice therefore joins economy of description to a broader demand that setting and dialogue feel observed rather than merely idealized.

Rejection and Continued Interest

The Canadian Woman returns Averil’s Atonement promptly, despite Anne’s extensive revisions. Anne puts it away in the attic trunk with the old Story Club tales and calls the rejection the end of her literary ambitions. She does not tell Mr. Harrison about the outcome; when he later asks bluntly whether the story has been accepted, she answers briefly that the editor would not take it. The exchange shows that his involvement has not ended with his criticism: he follows the story’s fate, while Anne, bruised by the rejection, offers him no account of her disappointment.