The Secret Diaries Of Miss Anne Lister: Vol. 1: I Know My Own Heart (Virago Modern Classics)

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Anne Lister (3 April 1791 – 22 September 1840) was an English diarist, famous for revelations for which she was dubbed "the first modern lesbian". We soon got to kissing again on the sofa... at last I got my right hand up her petticoats and after much fumbling got through the opening of her drawers and touched (first time) the hair and skin of queer. She never offered the least resistance.' Like Anne Lister two hundred years before her, Natasha wrote her diaries in a secret code, based on the Greek alphabet. The book contains photographs of Anne’s and Natasha’s encoded diaries. It is divided into sections such as … While being educated at home, Lister developed an interest in classical literature. In a surviving letter to her aunt from 3 February 1803, a young Lister explains "My library is my greatest pleasure... The Grecian History had pleased me much." [9] Shibden Hall, in 2010, with the library tower added by Anne Lister on the left

Besides, Sir T. H. was proved to be a perfect man by his having a child & it was infamous to be connected with both sexes – but that [there] were beings who were so unfortunate as to be not quite so perfect &, supposing they kept to one side [of] the question, was there no excuse for them. But how would Lister, who took such care to keep her private thoughts hidden, feel about having her experiences broadcast to a modern audience? While it’s impossible to say with certainty, Choma thinks Lister likely would have approved of being celebrated as an inspirational historic figure—a woman who, though she could not be entirely open about her sexuality, did not run from it.a b c Crampton, Caroline (5 December 2013). "The lesbian Dead Sea Scrolls: Anne Lister's diaries". New Statesman. London . Retrieved 25 August 2014. The first episode of the 1994 BBC Two series A Skirt Through History, titled "A Marriage", features Julia Ford as Anne Lister, and Sophie Thursfield as Marianna Belcombe. [56] [57] In the early 1980s, Whitbread, who is also a Halifax local, stumbled upon the journals while researching Lister’s life for an article she hoped to write about this historic occupant of the town. She spent the next five years transcribing and decoding the diaries, ultimately deciding to publish edited selections because they were “just far too valuable and too intriguing” to be kept hidden. Not all of Lister’s voluminous diary entries have been transcribed, however. Choma says that she and Wainwright are formulating a plan to complete the job. Muriel M. Green’s “Selected Letters” shed light on Anne’s developing character and maturity starting with a precocious letter at age 9 to her beloved Aunt Anne, and ending with a final draft letter to her long-term lover Mrs. Mariana Lawton in 1840.

Journal of Ann Walker". West Yorkshire Archive Service. WYC:1525/7/1/5/1. Archived from the original on 9 March 2021. Anne Lister's] sense of self, and self-awareness, is what makes her modern to us. She was a woman exercising conscious choice. She controlled her cash and her body. At a time when women had to marry, or be looked after by a male relative, and when all their property on marriage passed to their husband, Anne Lister not only dodged the traps of being female, she set up a liaison with another woman that enhanced her own wealth and left both of them free to live as they wished . . . The diaries gave me courage.' - Jeanette WintersonPortrait at very top of Lister from Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation. Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928. Martha Vicinus, 2004, University of Chicago Press . See chapter: "'A Scheme of Romantic Friendship': Love and Same-Sex Marriage", pp.18-28. Lister was born at an extraordinary time in history: her father served on the British side in the American War of Independence and was wounded at Lexington, returning unwilling to run the family business. But, as well as being the time of the American Revolution, this was the white heat of the British Industrial Revolution, which was led by the mills of Yorkshire. Mr was an ⟨x⟩, with single and double cross-bars for Mrs and Miss, so that Mrs looked rather like ⟨𝔛⟩. I love and only love the fairer sex, and thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any love but theirs,” Lister wrote in her diary in 1820. Before she eventually settled down with heiress Ann Walker, Lister won the hearts of numerous other women. Courting them wasn’t always easy, but Lister had her methods. While flirting, she used to gauge the other party’s interest by mentioning books or plays that dealt with LGBTQ issues—like the writings of Juvenal, a Roman poet who had some pretty strong opinions about homosexuality. By watching the listener’s reaction, Lister could often predict if her advances would be successful. 2. Traditionally “feminine” clothing just wasn’t Lister’s style.

Anne resumed her affairs with Yorkshire’s eligible women, Mariana’s older sister Anne among them. But she confided in her diaries the pain caused by Mariana.I am resolved not to let my life pass without some private memorial that I may hereafter read, perhaps with a smile, when Time has frozen up the channel of those sentiments which flow so freely now. (19th February 1819) There was no blueprint for what she was doing, she was just being herself. As you’re playing her, you just become aware that you have a right to be a person, you have a right to be who you are.” Lister greatly enjoyed travel, although her biographer Angela Steidele suggests her trips in later life were also a way to "evade the self realisation that she had failed at everything she set her hand to". [21] She made her first trip to continental Europe in 1819, when she was 28 years old. She travelled with her 54-year-old aunt, also called Anne Lister, on a two-month trip to France. [22] I didn't know exactly what to expect from this book, and I haven't watched the show before reading it; I think it was a mistake. It makes sense that it's not the entirety of her diaries (Lister documented her life since she was 25 to one month before her death at 49 every single day. That's a lot of diaries) but I was somewhat disappointed in the amount of summarizing. Also of course, it's the recounting of a real person's life so it makes sense that a lot of the daily happenings have been glossed over because deemed uninteresting--but I feel like there might have been more. Hughes, Patricia, The Secret Life of Miss Anne Lister and the Curious Tale of Miss Eliza Raine. (Hues Books Ltd 2010)