Anne Shirley was born in the (fictional) town of Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia and spent the earliest years of her childhood there. No specific birthdate is given, but references in later works suggest her date of birth is in March 1865, although a reference in Anne's House of Dreams to the Canadian federal election of 1896, when she was approximately 27, could be interpreted to date her birth to approximately the spring of 1869. At one point in Anne of Green Gables, Anne saves the Barry baby from an attack of croup while all of the adults have gone to Charlottetown to hear a speech by a Conservative Politician who wants to be prime minister, whose most notable facial feature is his huge bulbous nose. The Politician is not named, but his political affiliation and his prominent nose would strongly imply he is Sir John A. Macdonald, the hard-drinking Scotsman whose alcoholism gave him a bloated nose who served as Prime Minister from 1867-73 and again from 1878-91. In any event, Anne was orphaned as an infant of three months, when her parents, schoolteachers Walter and Bertha Shirley (née Willis), died of typhoid fever. Without any other relations, Anne was taken in by Mrs. Thomas, who had done housework for the Shirleys. After Mr. Thomas died, Anne went to live with the Hammond family for some years and was treated as little more than a servant until Mr. Hammond died, whereupon Mrs. Hammond divided her children amongst relatives and Anne was sent to the orphanage at Hopetown. She considered herself as "cursed" by twins — Mrs. Hammond had three sets of twins whom Anne helped raise.

Anne's first two children (one of whom dies in infancy) are born in the House of Dreams, before Anne and Gilbert and their growing family reluctantly move to larger quarters. In a moment of theological reflection, Anne questions if the death of her child is the "will of God", using phrases exploring the theodical question of death and pain in a universe presided by a just God that are identical to those Montgomery used in her diary after her second son was stillborn. After Anne's loss, she and Leslie bond as the two women share their stories of pain as they "talk it out", leading them to hold hands and declare: "We are both women-and friends forever". Anne and Gilbert live the rest of their lives in Glen St. Mary, in a large house they name Ingleside. They have a total of seven children between approximately 1895-1900: Joyce (or "Joy") (who dies very soon after her birth at the House of Dreams), James Matthew ("Jem"), Walter Cuthbert, twin girls Diana ("Di") and Anne ("Nan"), Shirley (the youngest son), and Bertha Marilla ("Rilla"). Anne is quite ill after the births of both Joyce and Shirley, but recovers both times. A major Problem for Anne merges when Gilbert's obnoxious Aunt Mary Maria visits and refuses to leave, tormenting Anne in various ways.

Anne's children enjoy a happy, even idyllic childhood, spending much of their time playing and adventuring in a nearby hollow they name Rainbow Valley. Anne is a permissive mother who is never stern with her children and plays hide-and-seek with them and other children in the cenetery. When the local Presbyterian minister objects, Anne replies: "Why did they ever build that manse beside the graveyard in the first place?". Anne's children are often bullied by nasty children, requiring their mother to provide with much consolation. When Shirley reads about the theory of a Jocasta complex in one of her husband's medical journals together with a warning about mothers kissing their children, she says: "A man of course! No woman would ever write anything so silly and wicked". At one point, Anne tries to resume her writing career, publishing very poetical obituary for a neighbor that is mocked as an "obitchery" by an ignorant, rude newspaper Editor, through it is well received by everyone else. Anne herself has a comfortable life, with a live-in maid (Susan Baker) who effectively runs the household and is also Shirley's primary caregiver after Anne falls ill giving birth to him. Upon recovering, Anne says: "I find I go on living". After Anne recovers, she is involved in various ladies' committees in town, and travels to Europe with Gilbert for an extended tour of the continent at one point, circa 1906.

In addition to Anne of Green Gables (1908), Anne is the central character of subsequent novels written by Montgomery: Anne of Avonlea (1909), Anne of the Island (1915), Anne's House of Dreams (1917), Anne of Windy Poplars (1936; UK title Anne of Windy Willows), and Anne of Ingleside (1939). Other books in the Anne series include Rainbow Valley (1919), which focuses on Anne's children during their childhood, and Rilla of Ingleside (1921), which focuses on Anne's youngest daughter during World War I.

In 1912, Anne of Green Gables was translated into Polish and published in a pirate edition in Warsaw with the book being credited to "Anne Montgomery". The book was extremely popular in Poland and during the Second World War, the Armia Krajowa resistance group issued editions of the book to remind its members what they were fighting for. For a time, Anne of Green Gables was banned in Communist Poland, and the book circulated in samizdat editions as Anne was seen as a symbol of individualism and an unwillingness to submit to authority, making her a popular heroine for those struggling against the Communist dictatorship. The Canadian scholar Mary Henley Rubio mentioned visiting Warsaw in 1984, where she saw a version of Anne of Green Gables being performed in a local theater, and that when the audience learned she was from Canada, she found herself mobbed by the audience who all wanted her autograph as she came from the same land as their beloved Anne.

But the spectre of World War I changes things, and all three Blythe boys (as well as the fiancés of Nan and Rilla) eventually volunteer to fight in the war. The Blythe family, which follows the war closely, soon becomes familiar with far-away places such as Calais, Mons, Lodz, Ypres, Belgrade, Amiens, Prezemysl, Gallipoli, Antwerp and Kut al Amara. The sensitive and poetic Walter, the second of Anne's sons to volunteer, is killed at Courcelette in 1916. Jem is listed as missing at the war's conclusion, but after an agonizing five months, eventually emerges alive, having escaped from a POW camp. Montgomery knew John McCrae, the author of the poem In Flanders Fields, and she modeled Walter partly on him.

The British scholar Faye Hammill observed that such is the popularity of Shirley that she has overshadowed her creator, L.M Montgomery as license plates in Prince Edward Island bear the slogan "P.E.I Home of Anne of Green Gables" rather than "P.E.I Birthplace of L.M Montgomery". The Actress Mary Miles Minter played Shirley in the 1919 film adaption of Anne of Green Gables later had her career ruined when the film Director william Desmond Taylor was murdered in 1922, and her name came up as a suspect, through she was never charged. When Minter attempted a comeback as an advice columnist later in the 1920s, she used the pen-name Anne Shirley in an attempt to restore her wholesome image, which had been ruined by the Taylor murder scandal. The Actress Dawn O'Day who played Shirley in the 1934 film adaption of Anne of Green Gables liked the character so much she legally changed her name to Anne Shirley. Montgomery during her youth had experiences of what she called "the flash"-moments of quiet contemplation of the beauty of nature when she was walking alone that gave her emotional ecstasy and what she regarded as the awareness of a higher spiritual power running through nature and her. Despite Montgomery's claim that Shirley was not autobiographical, the moments when Shirley experienced moments of a mystical communion with nature are almost word for word the same as Montgomery's descriptions of "the flash" in her diary.

Much of the appeal of the Anne books was due to increased urbanization and industrialization in the early 20th century, which led many people to look back nostalgically to a romanticized rural idyll where people still lived the "simple life", which was how precisely how publishers marketed the Anne books at the time. In Canada itself, many intellectuals tended to see modernity as a threatening phenomenon, and in turn linked the more unpleasant aspects of modernity to the United States, which was viewed at the time as a rapacious, bullying nation intent upon devouring its neighbors. Much of the appeal of the character of Anne to Canadian critics at the time was as a symbol of the wholesome, friendly quality of Canadian life, where people still retained traditional values, unlike American Writers with their obsession with violence and sex in stories set in a depersonalized urban environment. Hammill observed that when some of the younger Canadian Writers in the 1920s-30 attempted to ape American Writers with unpleasant "realistic" stories focusing on sex and violence in the cities, they were denounced by the critics for their "American" stories with the obvious implication that such stories were not "Canadian". As urbanization gathered pace in the early 20th century, "regional literature" depicting life in rural regions gained popularity in the English-speaking world, and in the United States, Canadian literature was seen as a type of "regional literature" as Canada with its vast tracts of forests and farmland together with its British heritage, where the people were proud to be part of the British empire, which gave Canada a rather quaint image in the United States as a backward, rustic place, where the traditional values lived on. Having won their independence in the Revolutionary War, for Americans in the early 20th century it was almost incomprehensible that people in English-Canada should want to be part of the British empire, which gave Canada the image of a very conservative society in the United States in this era. Given these views of Canada, many Americans were inclined to share the Canadian view of Shirley as an iconic symbol of Canada.

In the 1934 adaption of Anne of Green Gables, Anne Shirley was portrayed by Dawn O'Day, who later adopted the character's name as her own stage name. She reprised the role in Anne of Windy Poplars, a 1940 film adaption. Montgomery liked the 1934 film more than the 1919 film, not least because now the book's dialogue could be portrayed on the silver screen and that two scenes were filmed on location in Prince Edward Island (though the rest of the film was shot in California), but still charged that neither the 1919 nor 1934 versions of Anne of Green Gables quite got her book right. Writing about the 1934 version of Anne of Green Gables, Montgomery wrote in her diary that it was a "thousand times" better than the 1919 version, but still it: "was so entirely different from my vision of the scenes and the people that it did not seem like my book at all". The British scholar Faye Hammill wrote that 1934 film version stripped Anne of the "Canadian and feminist" aspects that the Anne of the books possessed, stating that there was something about Anne that Hollywood cannot get right. Hammill observed that the idea that Anne was entirely cheerful is a product of the film and television versions as the Anne of the books has to deal with loss, rejection, cruel authority figures, and loneliness.

Though Anne gives up writing short stories shortly after becoming a mother, she continues to write poems throughout her life. These poems are regularly shared with the rest of the family, who offer comments, criticism and encouragement. Anne's later work expressed deep difficulties with coming to terms with Walter's demise, and with the idea of war; several characters comment that neither Anne nor Gilbert were ever quite the same after Walter's death. Still, the couple are utterly devoted to each other and their family, and as the saga concludes, circa 1940, the Blythes remain pillars of their community who have enjoyed a 50-year marriage.

Akage no An (Red Haired Anne), as Shirley is known in Japan, is an extremely popular cultural icon in that country. From the time of the Meiji Restoration until 1945, the Japanese educational system (which was run jointly by the Army and Navy ministries) was designed to indoctrinate the students into Bushido ("the way of the warrior") as the fierce warrior code of the Samurai is called as the purpose of schools in Japan from the Meiji Restoration until the end of World War II was to train the boys to be Soldiers. The Japanese educational system unabashedly glorified war as the highest form of human activity and the idea that the Emperor of Japan was a living god, with the boys being taught it was the greatest honor to die for the Emperor while the girls were taught it was the greatest honor to have sons to die for the Emperor. Alongside the militarism of the educational system went a mood of marked xenophobia and outright racism with Japanese teachers during World War II telling their students that the Anglo-American "white devils" were cannibals whose favorite food was Asians. As part of the educational reforms during the American occupation (1945-52), it was decided that Japanese students needed something somewhat less militaristic and xenophobic to read than texts glorifying Bushido and Anne of Green Gables was made mandatory reading in Japanese schools in 1952. Additionally, as part of the educational reforms in Japan, there was an effort to reduce the previous rampant xenophobia that characterized Japanese teaching until 1945, and it was felt the wholesome, loveable character of Shirley would provide Japanese students with an Example of how people in the West were not "white devils" as their government had told them during the war. As there were many orphans left over from World War II in 1952 Japan, the character of Shirley instantly caught on in Japan and has been one of the most loved characters in Japan since that time. Much of the appeal of Akage no An lies in her ability to rise above any situation due to her pluck and her willingness to challenge “that most formidable of Japanese dragons, the bossy older matron.”

Anne was portrayed by Kim Braden in two BBC mini-series in the early 1970s, based upon the books Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea.

In 1979, Japan's World Masterpiece Theater produced Akage no Anne. Later, in 2009, the prequel novel Before Green Gables was adapted into an anime, Kon'nichiwa Anne: Before Green Gables, in which Anne also appears as the central character.

In 2005, Sullivan produced an animated reimagining of the story, Anne: Journey to Green Gables, with McKenzie Sullivan providing the voice of Anne.

Anne also appears and is mentioned in Chronicles of Avonlea and Further Chronicles of Avonlea, though the bulk of the stories in these volumes are about other characters. In The Blythes Are Quoted (published in an abridged format as The Road to Yesterday and in a restored, unabridged edition in 2009), Anne is a peripheral character as a grandmother with several grandchildren, at least three of whom are preparing to enlist in the Canadian army during the opening days of World War II. These were among the last stories Montgomery wrote before her death in 1942.

Shirley is so popular in Japan that there is The Anne Academy in Fukuoka that teaches girls how to speak English with a Maritime accent while in Okayama there is The School of Green Gables, a nursing school that teaches young women how to behave like Shirley. Hanako Muraoka, the Japanese woman who translated Anne of Green Gables into Japanese, has become a Celebrity in her own right solely for translating the book, and in 2014 NHK aired a television mini-series titled Hanako to Anne about Muraoka's life and her struggle to get Anne of Green Gables translated and published in Japan. Hanako to Anne which aired between March-September 2014 was a great rating success, getting an average of 22% viewership in the Kanto region (the most populous part of Japan), and caused a doubling of Japanese tourists to Prince Edward island. The series, which starred Yuriko Yoshitaka as Muraoka, suggested that there were many parallels between Muraoka's life and Anne's, and thus was a sort of retelling of Anne's life in the late Meiji, Taishō and early Shōwa periods of Japanese history. In 1993, a theme park called Canadian World opened in Hokkaido whose most popular attraction was a reproduction of Green Gables. In 2010, the Globe and Mail wrote: "It could almost be declared that Anne's true home isn't rural Prince Edward Island any more. It's Japan, where Lucy Maud Montgomery's tale of Anne and her pigtailed innocence remains so popular that it has become ingrained in the national consciousness since the book's original Japanese translation as Red-Haired Anne in 1952." In 2014, the Japanese diplomat Eiji Yamamoto told a Journalist from the Toronto Star: "Even though she's an orphan, Anne is a free spirit, she says anything she wants. In the years after World War II, the Japanese people were poor. There were many orphans. And people had lost hope. They were anxious. Anne is an optimist. She helped people get courage."

In 2016, a 90-minute movie was made (L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables) with Ella Ballentine as Anne Shirley, Sara Botsford as Marilla Cuthbert, and Martin Sheen as Matthew Cuthbert. This was followed by sequels in 2017, entitled Anne of Green Gables: The Good Stars and Anne of Green Gables: Fire & Dew.

Anne was portrayed by Amybeth McNulty in the 2017 CBC series Anne.