10 Facts About Walter Blythe

Walter Cuthbert Blythe is a fictional character in Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series of novels.

Walter Cuthbert Blythe was the second son of Gilbert and Anne Blythe, and was born in 1893 at their home "Ingleside" in Glen St Mary, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Walter Blythe was named after his maternal grandfather, Walter Shirley; his middle name honours siblings Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, who had adopted his mother.

Walter Blythe won some admiration after winning a fight with a school bully who had insulted his mother and Faith Meredith.

Walter Blythe resigned from this position in the spring of 1914, with the intention of pursuing a bachelor's degree at Redmond College in Kingsport, Nova Scotia.

However, even though he was of age, Walter Blythe did not do so, ostensibly over concerns that he was still in a weakened state from having had typhoid.

Around the same time, while in the trenches, Walter Blythe wrote the poem for which he would become famous.

Only a few months after the poem was published, Walter Blythe died at the Battle of Courcelette, in September 1916.

Again, his vision was accurate, as Walter Blythe went into battle the following morning and was killed by a bullet during the charge, dying instantly.

Walter Blythe's death was "foreshadowed" in Chapter 41 of Anne of Ingleside, published 18 years after the book in which he dies.