Helena Whitbred
Helena Whitbred
Helena Whitbred
The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister- Vol 1
I Know My Own Heart
'Engaging, revealing, at times simply astonishing: Anne Lister's diaries are an indispensable read for anyone interested in the history of gender, sexuality, and the intimate lives of women' SARAH WATERS.
'The Lister diaries are the Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history; they changed everything. By resurrecting them and editing them with such loving attention and intelligence, Helena Whitbread has earned the gratitude of a whole generation' EMMA DONOGHUE.
When this volume of Anne Lister's diaries was first published in 1988, it was hailed as a vital piece of lost lesbian history. The editor, Helena Whitbread, had spent years painstakingly researching and transcribing Lister's extensive journals, much of which were written in an elaborate code - what Lister called her 'crypthand', which allowed her to record her life in intimate, and at times, explicit, detail.
Until then, Anne Lister's lesbianism had been supressed or hinted at; this was the first time her story had been told. Anne Lister defied the role of nineteenth-century womanhood: she was bold, fiercely independent, a landowner, industrialist, traveller and lesbian - a woman who lived her life on her own terms. '[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.
These diaries include the years 1816-1824.
Helena Whitbred
Helena Whitbred
Helena Whitbred
The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister - Vol.2 No Priest But Love
'The Lister diaries are the Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history; they changed everything. By resurrecting them and editing them with such loving attention and intelligence, Helena Whitbread has earned the gratitude of a whole generation' EMMA DONOGHUE. 'Engaging, revealing, at times simply astonishing: Anne Lister's diaries are an indispensable read' SARAH WATERS. Anne Lister (1791-1840) was one of the most remarkable women of her time. Fearless and uncompromising, she was determined to live life on her own terms, both financially and sexually.
She wrote extensive diaries in 'crypthand', which allowed her to record her life in intimate, and sometimes explicit, detail. When they were decoded by Helena Whitbread, lesbian history was changed for ever. This is the second volume of her diaries.
No Priest But Love begins in 1824. After an ill-fated love affair with a married woman, Anne Lister embarks on a journey alone to post-revolutionary Paris, a city alive with political intrigue. Here, she becomes romantically involved with a young widow, a relationship at odds with her social ambitions.
Jill Liddington
Helena Whitbred
Jill Liddington
Female Fortune
‘A unique and thrilling insight into the brilliant mind of Anne Lister’
Sally Wainwright, creator of Gentleman Jack
Female Fortune is the book which inspired Sally Wainwright to write Gentleman Jack, now a major drama series for the BBC and HBO.
Lesbian landowner Anne Lister inherited Shibden Hall in 1826. She was an impressive scholar, fearless traveller and successful businesswoman, even developing her own coalmines. Her extraordinary diaries, running to 4-5 million words, were partly written in her own secret code and recorded her love affairs with startling candour. The diaries were included on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2011.
Jill Liddington’s classic edition of the diaries tells the story of how Anne Lister wooed and seduced neighbouring heiress Ann Walker, who moved in to live with Anne and her family in 1834. Politically active, Anne Lister door-stepped her tenants at the 1835 Election to vote Tory. And socially very ambitious, she employed architects to redesign both the Hall and the estate.
Yet Ann Walker had an inconvenient number of local relatives, suspicious of exactly how Anne Lister could pay for all her grand improvements. Tensions grew to a melodramatic crescendo when news reached Shibden of the pair being burnt in effigy.
This 2022 edition includes a fascinating Afterword on the recent discovery of Ann Walker’s own diary. Female Fortune is essential reading for those who watched Gentleman Jack and want to know more about the extraordinary woman that was Anne Lister.
Jill Liddington
Jill Liddington
Jill Liddington
As Good As A Marriage
Anne Lister is a figure much written about, and her famous diaries run to over 4 million words, many of which are in a hard-to-read code. In this book, Jill Liddington continues the project she started with Female Fortune, guiding the reader through Anne Lister's writings from 1836–38.
After her 'marriage’ to wealthy local heiress Ann Walker, the two lived together at Shibden. In 1836, with the deaths of Anne Lister’s father and aunt (and the banishment of irksome sister Marian), Lister gained full control of Shibden Hall. Now at her most powerful, she wanted to fulfil her ambition to remodel herself and Shibden with appropriate grandeur. Defying gender norms of the time, and becoming an active entrepreneur, Lister developed Shibden’s coal-mining potential and employed an impressive array of gardening and design experts (notably York architect John Harper). Under them laboured a small army of workmen, all working to reinvent traditional Shibden as something better fitting the heights of Anne Lister’s social ambitions.
Suspicious Walker relatives might have seen this as a deviant household. But to Anne Lister it was nothing of the sort. Her remarkable self-confidence sprang from her ancient inherited acres, her identity as a traditional member of the landed gentry and her belief that God had determined her ‘nature’, to live life exactly as she did. Anne Lister’s diaries dramatically challenge received notions of gender and female sexuality in early nineteenth-century England.
Anne Choma
Jill Liddington
Anne Choma
Gentleman Jack The Real Anne Lister
The official companion book to the HBO series Gentleman Jack created by Sally Wainwright and starring Suranne Jones In 1834, Anne Lister made history by celebrating and recording the first ever known marriage to another woman. This is her remarkable, true story. Anne Lister was extraordinary. Fearless, charismatic and determined to explore her lesbian sexuality, she forged her own path in a society that had no language to define her. She was a landowner, an industrialist and a prolific diarist, whose output has secured her legacy as one of the most fascinating figures of the 19th century. Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister follows Anne from her crumbling ancestral home in Yorkshire to the glittering courts of Denmark as she resolves to put past heartbreak behind her and find herself a wife. This biographical portrait introduces the real Gentleman Jack, featuring unpublished journal extracts decrypted for the first time by series creator Sally Wainwright and historian Anne Choma. "Anne Choma's Gentleman Jack is not just a tie-in to the TV series, but a probing and page-turning study of legendary diarist Anne Lister, full of original insights and freshly decoded material from the 1830s period of Lister's hunt for a wife." -Emma Donoghue, New York Times bestselling author of Room This description may be from another edition of this product.
Anne Choma
Jill Liddington
Anne Choma
Gentleman Jack HBO
In 1834, Anne Lister made history by celebrating and recording the first ever known marriage to another woman. Now the basis for the HBO series Gentleman Jack, this is her remarkable, true story.
Anne Lister was extraordinary. Fearless, charismatic and determined to explore her lesbian sexuality, she forged her own path in a society that had no language to define her. She was a landowner, an industrialist and a prolific diarist, whose output has secured her legacy as one of the most fascinating figures of the 19th century. Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister follows Anne from her crumbling ancestral home in Yorkshire to the glittering courts of Denmark as she resolves to put past heartbreak behind her and find herself a wife. This book introduces the real Gentleman Jack, featuring unpublished journal extracts decrypted for the first time by series creator Sally Wainwright and writer Anne Choma.
Janet Lea
Lynn Pharaoh
Lynn Pharaoh
The Gentleman Jack Effect
Until Gentleman Jack, English landowner, world traveler, and prolific diarist Anne Lister was a well-kept secret. In a perfect mash-up of 19th history and entertainment, the LGBTQ+-themed prime time TV series vaulted a 230-year-old unapologetic lesbian to superstar status and electrified gay women around the world. The hit BBC period drama made Anne Lister, aka Gentleman Jack, an instant LGBTQ+ icon.
Lister’s explosive impact is the subject of this riveting, illustrated collection of 62 stories that chronicle the epic transformations of Gentleman Jack fans inspired by the historic figure who brazenly challenged gender and social norms two centuries ago. Through firsthand accounts, The Gentleman Jack Effect, deftly recounts how eight hours of ground-breaking television emboldened women—regardless of whom they love—to fully be themselves, ignited the creation of an international lesbian community, and sparked a global movement to update queer history.
First-person narratives from dozens of fans supercharged by the woman often described as the first modern lesbian detail how they're embracing and celebrating their nature, coming out, finding love and friendship, making pilgrimages, climbing mountains, pursuing creative projects, and taking on challenges of all kinds. This unique anthology of the experiences of LGBTQ+ people and their allies worldwide—all committed to following in Anne Lister’s footsteps—is must-reading for anyone longing for connection to like-minded souls or in need of a refresher course in self-acceptance and risk-taking.
Lynn Pharaoh
Lynn Pharaoh
Lynn Pharaoh
Anne Lister, Ann Walker and Me: The amazing true story of two 19th century landed-ladies whose courage and determination to share life's journey together as a married couple is an inspiration to lesbians across the globe.
My own journey to discover how it came about that Anne Lister and Ann Walker fell in love and moved in together at Shibden Hall, Halifax, in 1834, started when I had been transcribing Anne Lister's diaries for the West Yorkshire Archive Service.during 2019 and 2020.
From my transcribing of Anne Lister's diaries, I soon came to the conclusion that she was an extremely intelligent, well-educated and highly engaging person, but that the key to truly recognising the extraordinary woman that she was, was an appreciation of what she referred to as her 'oddity', essentially her lesbian nature, the powerful driving force of her life.
Anne's diary January 1821: 'I love and only love the fairer sex, and thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any other love than theirs'.
Anne and Ann's courtship was exciting, passionate, but also tortuous with so many obstacles to be overcome. In a letter from Ann Walker to Anne Lister in February 1834: 'do come quickly for I am getting dull and I want you in a thousand ways'.
Their honeymoon, in the summer of 1834, lasted twelve and a half weeks and involved a journey of about 2000 miles, mostly in their own carriage but also by boat, by char-a-banc, on foot and by mule.
Sunday, August 31st, 1834, was the first full day of Anne Lister and Ann Walker living together at Shibden as a married couple. The next month or so would be exciting and, at times, exhausting for them both as they brought Ann Walker's possessions from Lidgate House to Shibden Hall, made extensive changes to some of the rooms at the hall and bought new furniture and furnishings to create the own space where they could be comfortable and snug.
Clara Barley
Lynn Pharaoh
Clara Barley
The Moss House
Two hundred years ago, neighbouring Yorkshire landowners Miss Lister and Miss Walker find their lives become entwined in a passionate, forbidden relationship and retreat to the Moss House, their private sanctuary away from an unaccepting world. Their tranquility does not last long as they are drawn into the turmoil of a changing society and a divided family, testing their love for each other, eventually driving them from their home. The world was not yet ready for the likes of Miss Lister. Landowner, scholar, traveler, mountaineer and non-conformist but in The Moss House we discover her lifelong battle to be her true self as she finds Ann Walker and together they try to live life on their own terms.
Adeline Lim
Patricia Hughes
Clara Barley
In the Footsteps of Anne Lister
‘This solitary journey may do me good. It will shew me how far I may really trust to the resources of my own mind.’ – Anne Lister, 29 July 1833 Anne Lister: 19th-century mistress of Shibden Hall, Halifax. Prolific diarist, traveller, adventuress, lesbian. In 1833, she fulfils a long-anticipated trip to Germany and Denmark. She visits landmarks and sights that stand even today and meets celebrated and prominent people who have become immortalised in the annals of history.
Adeline Lim: Traveller, history enthusiast. In 2019, seeking a diversion after her dog’s death, she finds a worthy distraction in Anne’s travels.
Their journeys transect the centuries, transcending the passage of time. Through Anne, Adeline discovers a different facet of Europe, one steeped in historical significance brought to life by Anne’s words. Adeline travels more than 2,000 kilometres, from the celestial plafond of Saint Paulinus in Trier to the Hanseatic city of Lübeck, and across the Fehmarn Belt into Denmark to stand in the shadows of the Rundetårn of Copenhagen.
Adeline then chases the scent of Anne Lister’s trail through Denmark’s islands of Sjælland and Fyn back into Germany where she crosses the Elbe to find herself contemplating the distant North Sea, standing on the old pier of Alte Liebe in Cuxhaven, the very one which has withstood centuries of storms, even that of 1833 which stranded Anne in the harbour. Her journey brings her consolation, ignites in her a passion for Anne’s travels, and engenders a deep respect for the intrepid Anne.
This book contains never before published excerpts of Anne Lister’s diary and letters, spanning June to December 1833, maps of Anne’s journey and an appendix listing all the villages and cities Anne travelled through or visited in France, Germany, Luxembourg and Denmark, including landmarks that the 21st-century traveler can visit today.
Patricia Hughes
Patricia Hughes
Patricia Hughes
Gentleman Jack: The Early Life of Miss Anne Lister and the Curious Tale of Miss Eliza Raine
From the multitude of papers collected and filed by Anne Lister come the diaries of herself and an Indian heiress, and their letters to each other, some in secret code. This is the first part of their story. As far as possible their own words have been used to tell their tale, and the letters and notes in secret code have been translated to give insight into their lives. This book reveals their young lives in early nineteenth century Yorkshire in northern England, during the start of the Industrial Revolution. The Bronte sisters lived nearby and used Anne Lister and Eliza Raine as characters in some of their novels.
Patricia Hughes
Patricia Hughes
Patricia Hughes
Gentleman Jack: Anne Lister's Secret Diary for 1817
Anne Lister was born in 1791, the eldest living child of an extended landed family in Halifax in the West Riding of Yorkshire in northern England. As a girl with two brothers she would not inherit, so she decided to write for a living. From 1806 she wrote notes and described events in her life, but from 1817 her life changed - and she wrote her extensive journal every day until her death in 1840. Anne Lister's Diaries are recognised by the European Union as unique. They were donated in 1923 to Halifax Archives in West Yorkshire, England. The recent TV Series 'Gentleman Jack' is based on her life.