"No historical interest whatever": Anne Lister, part 6

Anne Lister by John Horner, ca. 1830s. Image source: Calderdale Museums: Shibden Hall Paintings

A continuation of "Captain Tom": Anne Lister, part 5

Anne Lister, (disappointing) heroine

In 2010 Emma Donoghue published an article in The Guardian entitled "My hero: Anne Lister." She wrote,

Not only did Lister ignore her culture's rules about whom she should sleep with, she scorned the other rules of womanhood, too. Always dressed mannishly in black (and called "Gentleman Jack" by the locals), she remodelled Shibden estate, ran a colliery, was the first woman to climb several peaks in the Pyrenees, and finally formed a canny marriage of convenience and paired up with a neighbouring heiress. Not a saint, then, but a woman who seized her freedoms rather than waiting for anyone to grant them to her. [1]

But Anne's ability to seize the freedoms outlined by Donoghue depended on her social and economic position as a landowner. And as Jill Liddington points out, "Many readers—coming to the Anne Lister writings hoping for a heroine, an empowerer of other women, an inspirational feminist icon—will be disappointed." [2]

Anne Lister held the political and social attitudes and wielded the economic power of a typical estate owner of her time. As more men became enfranchised, she manipulated her rent rolls and pressured her tenants to vote for her favored Tory candidates. She adamantly opposed women being given the right to vote:

Monday 6 December 1819: "'Rights of Women' [an article in the Manchester Observer] is a curious list of authorities in the support of the rights of women to take part in these reform meetings, to vote for representatives in the House of Commons &, in short, to be in every sense of the word, members of the body politic. What will not these demagogues advance, careless what absurdity or ruin they commit!" [3]

"Rights of Women." Manchester Observer, Saturday 27 November 1819, p. 824. Image source: University of Manchester Digital Collections: Peterloo: Manchester Observer (1818-1822)

She evicted elderly tenants who showed "symptoms of decrepitude" such as Benjamin Bottomley:

Friday 9 December 1831: I really hoped he was wise enough to be persuaded that at his age (nearer ninety, I presume, than eighty), it was time to give up farming. . .if he has no money, he is unfit for the farm, and if he has money, the farm is unfit for him. [4]

And, following a common practice of her time, she exploited child labor in her coal pits. (She was not the only or the first woman to own a mine: we need look no further than her life companion Ann Walker, who was also an owner of mines that exploited child labor.) What that meant is described in the 1842 Children's Employment Commission investigation of the mines in the areas of Halifax and the West Riding of Yorkshire:

. . .Children are taken into these mines to work as early as four years of age. . .while from eight to nine is the ordinary age at which employment in these mines commences. . .female Children begin to work in these mines at the same early ages as the males.

. . .the nature of the employment which is assigned to the youngest Children, generally that of “trapping” [i.e., opening and closing trap doors in the mines], requires that they should be in the pit as soon as the work of the day commences, and, according to the present system, that they should not leave the pit before the work of the day is at an end. . .as the Children engaged in it are commonly excluded from light and are always without companions, it would, were it not for the passing and repassing of the coal carriages, amount to solitary confinement of the worst order. . .in some districts they remain in solitude and darkness during the whole time they are in the pit, and, according to their own account, many of them never see the light of day for weeks together during the greater part of the winter season. . .

A child "trapping." Illustration from The Condition and Treatment of the Children Employed in the Mines and Collieries of the United Kingdom (1842). Image source: British Library

In her Listerwick colliery her coal steward James Holt intended to install "hurrying gates" that were about three and a half feet high.

. . .at different ages, from six years old and upwards, the hard work of pushing and dragging the carriages of coal from the workings to the main ways, or to the foot of the shaft, begins; a labour which all classes of witnesses concur in stating requires the unremitting exertion of all the physical power which the young workers possess.

Children pushing and dragging coal wagons. Illustration from The Condition and Treatment of the Children Employed in the Mines and Collieries of the United Kingdom (1842). Image source: British Library

. . .there are coal mines present work which these [subterranean] passages are so small, that even the youngest Children cannot move along them without crawling on their hands and feet, which unnatural and constrained posture they drag the loaded carriages after them; and yet, as it is impossible, by any outlay compatible with profitable return, to render such coal mines. . .fit for human beings to work in. . .they can never be worked without inflicting great and irreparable injury on the health of Children. [5]

A young woman dragging a load of coal. Illustration from The Condition and Treatment of the Children Employed in the Mines and Collieries of the United Kingdom (1842). Image source: British Library

Anne Lister's freedoms were exceedingly costly to those who worked in her mines, farmed her lands, and generated her wealth.

Anne Lister, "The first modern lesbian"?

Search on the phrase "the first modern lesbian" and you will find page after page referencing Anne Lister. However, I think it's possible to complicate or qualify every word in that phrase, including "the." Anne Lister certainly possessed a singular character, but she was not unique.

In 1823 Anne made the acquaintance of a somewhat older woman, Miss Pickford, who had a masculine nickname, "Frank"; Anne's lover Mariana Lawton called Anne "Fred." As did Anne with Mariana, Miss Pickford also had a "particular friend," Miss Threlfall. Out on a walk one day alone with Miss Pickford, Anne rather bluntly steered the conversation to the nature of that friendship.

Thursday 31 July 1823: Talked of. . .what I suspected, apologizing and wrapping up my surmise very neatly till at last she owned the fact, adding, 'You may change your mind if you please,' meaning give up my acquaintance or change my opinion of her if I felt inclined to do so after the acknowledgement she had made. 'Ah,' said [I], 'That is very unlike me. I am too philosophical. We were sent on this world to be happy. I do not see why we should not make ourselves as much so as we can in our own way.'. . .she merely replied, 'My way cannot be that of many other people.' [6]

Miss Pickford was not, of course, mistaken in her choice of confessor, and was openly skeptical when Anne pretended that her understanding of what she had been told was "from reading and speculation but nothing further; she was mistaken. 'No, no,' said she, 'it is not all theory.'. . .She told me I said a great many things she did not at all believe. Whether she credits my denial of all practical knowledge, I cannot yet make out" (Friday 1 August 1823). [7]

Several days later during another walk alone with Miss Pickford, Anne once again turned the conversation to Miss Threlfall.

Tuesday 5 August 1823: I said I considered her connection with her friend a marriage of souls & something more. That if they were on a visit & their friend provided them separate rooms, it would be unnecessary & they would presently defeat this arrangement by being together. Under other circumstances it would have been a wonder that, with beauty, fortune, etc., Miss Threlfall did not marry, but now it was no wonder at all. Asked Miss Pickford if she now understood me thoroughly. She said yes. . .We parted mutually satisfied, I, musing on what had passed. I am now let into her secret & she forever barred from mine. Are there more Miss Pickfords in the world than I have ever before thought of? [8]

Indeed, we cannot know how many Miss Pickfords and Miss Threlfalls there were (but certainly many thousands more than we know of through documentary evidence). But Anne Lister was hardly the first or the only woman in Britain to transgress gender norms in her self-presentation or to live more-or-less openly with another woman in a committed relationship.

Thanks to her masculine-seeming dress and bearing, Anne was called "Captain Tom" and "Gentleman Jack." In early 17th-century London, according to Kit Heyam's Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender (Seal Press, 2022), a stage performer and petty criminal named Moll Cutpurse (real name: Mary Frith) dressed as a man and was portrayed as a character named "Captain Jack" in The Roaring Girl (1611), a play by Shakespeare collaborator Thomas Middleton and Jonson collaborator Thomas Dekker. [9]

Title page of The Roaring Girle: or, Moll Cut-Purse, by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker (1611). Image source: National Portrait Gallery London

In Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801, Emma Donoghue gives some known examples of women who lived together as married couples. In 1760 it was reported in the London Chronicle that Barbara Hill of York, dressed as a man and calling herself John Brown, had attempted to enlist but had been recognized by a former acquaintance. Hill had disappeared around 1745, leaving behind her dresses. She apparently worked at several men's occupations, including stonecutter and postchaise driver. Around 1755 she had married a woman "with whom she has lived very agreeably ever since. . .On her sex being discovered after her enlisting, her supposed wife came to town in great affliction, begging that they might not be parted" [10].

There is also evidence of couples where no male persona, disguise, or cross-dressing was involved. Donoghue notes two intriguing entries in a marriage register in Taxal, Cheshire:

Hannah Wright and Anne Gaskill, Parish of Prestbury, 4th September 1707

Ane Norton and Alice Pickford, Parish of Prestbury, 3rd June 1708 [11]

And the Ladies of Llangollen, of course, were viewed by Anne as models of the sort of lifelong commitment she was seeking in a companion (see "I only love the fairer sex": Anne Lister, part 1 for details of Anne's visit to the Ladies in 1822).

So Anne was hardly the only or the first woman to dress in a masculine fashion or live with another woman as a committed couple. But can she at least be thought of as modern? Well, yes and no.

As Donoghue notes, Anne dressed in a greatcoat and boots that enabled physically taxing outdoor activities such as walking long distances, driving carriages, and riding horses; she, rather than her father, managed her estate and made complex financial decisions that involved engaging with male tenants, estate owners, businessmen and workmen; she seduced many of her women friends and acquaintances; and she sought a strategic marriage with a richer woman that would provide the necessary funds for her ambitious plans.

In all this Anne was primarily adopting long-established male prerogatives, and so in that sense can be thought of as a modern woman. But as a dynastic landlord who lived primarily off of rents collected from her tenants, the vast majority of whom were rural smallholders, she was the beneficiary of a system that stretched back at least to the land enclosures of the 16th century.

She also disdained families whose wealth derived too recently from commerce, and refused to call on women she considered her social inferiors. Meanwhile she herself strove to befriend (and in some cases attempted to seduce) aristocratic women who were several notches above her on the social scale. Her position within and embrace of a rigidly stratified land-based class system do not seem, in my view at least, particularly modern.

And finally, if she lived today would Anne Lister have considered herself a lesbian? Possibly not. In her long seduction of Mrs. Barlow in Paris (see "It was all nature": Anne Lister, part 2), Anne touched on Sapphism, one early 19th-century term for lesbianism:

Saturday 13 November 1824: Got on the subject of Saffic regard. Said there was artifice in it. It was very different from mine & would be no pleasure to me. [12]

She did not like Mrs. Barlow to reciprocate in sex because Anne felt it "was womanizing me too much" (Saturday 19 March 1825). And she mentioned to Mariana "my sensitiveness of anything that reminded me of my petticoats" (Thursday 25 May 1826). Had she the language to articulate the concept it's possible that Anne might have considered herself a trans man. Once with Miss Pickford she got on the subject of gender and brought up the mythological figure of Tiresias, the male seer who, as a punishment inflicted by the gods, was transformed into a woman:

Wednesday 19 February 1823: Among other things, I noticed Mr W—'s having called the air "she." Miss Pickford spoke of the moon being made masculine by some nations, for instance, by the Germans. I smiled & said the moon had tried both sexes, like old Tiresias, but that one could not make such an observation to every one. [13]

Tiresias, of course, had a male consciousness in a woman's body; is this how Anne thought of herself?

But rather than attempting to place Anne in categories that during her time had not yet been named, perhaps we should pay closer attention to Anne's own perspective: she believed that she had been born as she was, and that her sexuality, as she told Mrs. Barlow, "was all nature."

Sources for and works discussed in this series:

Books

For more about this fascinating, formidable, complex, and at times disconcerting woman, all of the books below can be recommended:

Helena Whitbread, editor. I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister, [1816–1824,] Virago, 1988/2010 (as The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister).

Helena Whitbread, editor. No Priest But Love: Excerpts from the Diaries of Anne Lister, 1824–1826, New York University Press, 1992.

In 1970 Dr. Phyllis Ramsden, a scholar who had been working on the diaries for over a decade, published an article in the Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarian Society covering the entire period of the diaries as then known, "Anne Lister's Journal (1817-1840)." Ramsden wrote that the coded sections in the journals were "excruciatingly tedious to the modern mind. . .and of no historical interest whatever." [14]

Her assertion was contradicted by Helena Whitbread's (re-)discovery and first publication of decoded excerpts from Anne Lister's diaries. The chance comment that led to Whitbread's groundbreaking work is described in "I only love the fairer sex": Anne Lister, part 1. For those interested in Anne Lister, Whitbread's books are the place to start, in terms both of scholarly precedence and of the chronology of Lister's life.

However, in I Know My Own Heart/The Secret Diaries, Whitbread is compressing a decades' worth of diary entries into 400 pages, and sometimes there are gaps. In particular, Whitbread does not include much material about Sibella Maclean, the daughter of minor Scottish nobility through whom Anne became acquainted with the world of aristocratic women. And during a three-month-long stay with Isabella Norcliffe at Langton Hall in the fall and winter of 1820-21, Anne juggled at least three sexual partners (Isabella Norcliffe, Mariana Lawton's sister Anne Belcombe, and another visitor, Miss Mary Vallance). Whitbread covers this visit in a few pages and does not emphasize what seems to have been a pretty remarkable level of sexual activity.

No Priest But Love has half the number of pages of I Know My Own Heart, but covers a much shorter time frame (just over two years, September 1824 through mid-October 1826). As a result, Whitbread can include longer diary excerpts. These provide additional details about Anne's thoughts, attitudes, and behavior, and include more explicit accounts of her sexual encounters than in I Know My Own Heart. Unfortunately the convention followed in I Know My Own Heart of printing the plain-hand diary excerpts in roman type and the coded sections in italics is not followed in the sequel; all entries are printed only in roman type, forcing the reader to guess which sections Anne wished to conceal. Another odd choice: Mariana Lawton's first name is spelled "Marianna" throughout; although there was variable spelling of names in the early 19th century, was this the contribution of an overzealous copy editor? Both volumes are well indexed, include bibliographies and have informative notes, although I noticed a few page reference errors in the index to The Secret Diaries.

Anne Choma, Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister, Penguin, 2019.

Choma's book was published to coincide with the first season of the BBC/HBO television series Gentleman Jack (2019; see below), and covers roughly the same time period (the first years of the 1830s); it even includes a foreword by Sally Wainwright, the creator of the series. It includes fewer diary excerpts and more connecting narrative (and so more speculative interpretation of motives, feelings and thoughts) than either Whitbread's or Jill Liddington's books. Choma also italicizes all diary excerpts, and so gives no indication of which portions were written in code. Not distinguishing between the coded and uncoded sections, as in Whitbread's No Priest But Love, results in the loss of essential information for the reader.

Choma also makes a few minor but annoying errors: for example, in commenting on Anne Lister's travels, Choma states that "it did not satisfy her to leave England for a week or two" (p. 209). Given the realities of travel before the establishment of railroad networks, this hardly seems remarkable: it took a week or more to journey from Halifax through London to Paris, and in 1834 it took Anne a month to travel less than a thousand mostly overland miles from Paris to Copenhagen. As a result of the time and effort involved in getting from one place to another, foreign trips, even to a single destination, tended to last for months rather than merely a week or two.

Choma also tends to omit or de-emphasize information that shows Anne Lister in an uncomplimentary light. For example, when Anne and Ann exchanged rings, Choma does not note that the ring Anne asked Ann to place on her finger was the very one Anne wore to symbolize her union with Mariana (and was a gift from her). And when the two women take communion together in York, Choma's excerpt from the diary ends with "The first time I ever joined Miss W— in my prayers. I had prayed that our union might be happy," omitting what follows: "she had not thought of doing as much for me" (see "Captain Tom": Anne Lister, part 5). Choma's book also lacks notes, sources (neither Helena Whitbread's nor Jill Liddington's books are acknowledged anywhere in Gentleman Jack), and an index.

Jill Liddington, Presenting the Past: Anne Lister of Halifax 1791–1840, Pennine Pens, 1994.

Jill Liddington, ed. Female Fortune: Land, Gender and Authority: The Anne Lister Diaries and Other Writings, 1833–1836, Rivers Oram Press, 1998.

Jill Liddington provides greater social and historical context than Choma and, like Whitbread, includes a full scholarly apparatus in both of her books. A fellow of the University of Leeds' Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, Liddington also has the advantage of approaching the material from the perspective of women's history, "especially the interplay between gender and class in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain" (from her page on the University of Leeds website). She has a complex story to tell, and she tells it well.

Presenting the Past consists of two papers published five years before Female Fortune was issued. The first paper covers the history of the diaries and the scholarship surrounding them up through Helena Whitbread's publication of I Know My Own Heart and No Priest But Love; the second paper discusses the surviving letters and Muriel Green's two book-length selections from them, Miss Lister of Shibden Hall: Selected Letters (1800-1840) (Book Guild, 1992), and her dissertation, A Spirited Yorkshirewoman: The Letters of Anne Lister of Shibden Hall, Halifax, b. 1791 - d. 1840 (1938). They offer fascinating detail on the gradual recognition of the diaries and letters as rich sources for the social, economic, political, and sexual history of the 19th century. And the first article offers a valuable summary of Anne Lister's early diary (1806-10), including some entries from the diary of Eliza Raine, Anne's first lover.

Female Fortune is a selection of excerpts from the diaries covering 1833-36. These were key years for Anne, during which she and Ann Walker made a symbolic marriage, Ann moved into Shibden Hall, Ann's estate was separated from that of her sister Elizabeth (after a struggle between Anne and Elizabeth's husband George Sutherland), and Anne and Ann each changed her will in favor of the other partner. It makes for compelling reading, and Liddington situates the material in the context of the economic and political developments of the time. Female Fortune became a major source for the second season of the Gentleman Jack TV series.

Taken together, the books by Whitbread, Choma and Liddington provide in-depth coverage of the two decades between 1816 and 1836, even if a few gaps remain. Still not given book-length treatment are the early years of Anne's diary (1806-1816), which include her first love affairs with Eliza Raine and Isabella Norcliffe, her seduction by Mariana Belcombe, and the crushing blow of Mariana's marriage to Charles Lawton. Neither has any book appeared on her final years (1836-40), including her extended and ultimately fatal trip with Ann through Russia; Liddington notes that Phyllis Ramsden's typescripts covering Anne's travels only quote sparingly from the diaries, and include almost nothing from the coded sections—the most personal material, and the most engaging for modern readers. [15]

Finally, a fully annotated critical edition of the complete diary would be an invaluable resource on a fascinating period in 19th-century history. Scholars, more work awaits.

Television dramatizations

Mariana (Anna Madeley) and Anne (Maxine Peake) in The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister. Image source: BBC.co.uk

The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, written by Jane English, directed by James Kent, starring Maxine Peake as Anne Lister, BBC, 2010, 92 mins.

Gentleman Jack was not the first dramatization of Anne Lister's life. It was preceded by this program, which covers the period from the marriage of Mariana Lawton (Anna Madeley) in 1816 to the move of Ann Walker (Christine Bottomley) into Shibden Hall in 1834. (A brief textual epilogue informs us of the circumstances of Anne's death and the later decoding of the diaries.) In telescoping the events of almost two decades into a 90-minute film, inevitably much is omitted and some events are shifted.

But the program also takes a great deal of dramatic license: Anne (Maxine Peake) is shown as far nicer, far blonder, far more of a femme in dress and demeanor, and far less of a seductress than what we know of the real-life Anne. Ann Walker's move into Shibden Hall is for protection against intimidation by Christopher Rawson (Dean Lennox Kelly) over coal-mining, rather than the result of Anne's long planning. (When Ann first moves into Shibden, Anne's aunt (Gemma Jones) openly wonders why the women aren't sharing a bedroom; Anne replies rather primly, "I'm sure Miss Walker would like her privacy.")

Meanwhile, Ann is shown to be feisty and self-determined. She is the one who defies Mrs. Priestley (Richenda Carey), here her aunt rather than cousin by marriage; Ann also suggests that she move in permanently with Anne before the women have even exchanged their first kiss. And the "Captain Tom" marriage announcement in the newspaper (see "Captain Tom": Anne Lister, part 5) lacks the context of a hotly contested election and comes from a different source, Christopher Rawson, than the actual most likely perpetrator Rawdon Briggs (absent from film).

As we've come to expect of a BBC production, the costumes and settings are recreated in exquisite detail, the film is beautifully photographed, and the acting is excellent; unfortunately, far weaker is the script's historical verisimilitude.

Anne (Suranne Jones) and Ann (Sophie Rundle) in Gentleman Jack. Image source: BBC.co.uk

Gentleman Jack, written and directed by Sally Wainwright and others, starring Suranne Jones as Anne Lister, BBC, 2019–2022, 16 episodes, 950 mins.

With a few exceptions, the characters and events we encounter over the two seasons of Gentleman Jack are far more true their representations in the diaries. We see Anne (Suranne Jones) evicting an elderly tenant, and as she's planning to sink her own coal pit, learning that its profitability will rely on the employment of women and children. She's also overbearing to her sister Marian (absent from The Secret Diaries) and implacably opposed to her attachment to Mr. Abbott (John Hollingworth). Ann (Sophie Rundle) is ambivalent about moving to Shibden, and Anne's Aunt Anne (the ageless Gemma Jones once again) is sweetly accepting (and even encouraging) of her niece's desire for a female companion.

The writers can't resist adding some completely fictional drama, however. There's a double murder subplot involving one of Anne's tenant families that is wholly unnecessary. And Anne is physically attacked on the street by a thug hired by Christopher Rawson (Vincent Franklin), who is even nastier here than in The Secret Diaries. The real-life Anne was often subjected to rude comments, and was once confronted when out on a walk by a man carrying a stick, but she faced him down and no assault took place. Another man once tried to put his hand up her dress, but she "was aiming a blow [with her umbrella] when the fellow ran off as fast as he could" (11 January 1820). Both the murders and the assault are unneeded embellishments of and distractions from Anne's story.

Having 16 episodes to cover the events of roughly four years means that the series can spend more time giving us a fuller picture of Anne's life. Sometimes that can be too much of a good thing, and the series gets bogged down a bit in the details of her negotiations over coal mining and her conflict with Ann's suspicious brother-in-law George Sutherland (Derek Riddell) about dividing the Walker estate. I would have preferred instead if the series had provided more flashbacks to Anne's earlier life, which was certainly rich in incident; had the series done so it would have given us more of a sense of the experiences that helped shape her.

However, a key reason to watch the show is the performance of Suranne Jones as Anne, who, naturally enough, is in virtually every scene of every episode. Unafraid to be unsympathetic (although the character softens a bit as the series progresses), Jones is an arresting presence onscreen. It's unfortunate that it looks as though Season 2 will be the last opportunity to see her dynamic portrayal of Anne Lister; in June it was announced that HBO would not renew Gentleman Jack.

Other posts in this series:

• "I only love the fairer sex": Anne Lister, part 1
• "It was all nature": Anne Lister, part 2
• "I was now sure of the estate": Anne Lister, part 3
• "Who taught you to kiss?": Anne Lister, part 4
• "Captain Tom": Anne Lister, part 5

---

1. Emma Donoghue, "My hero: Anne Lister," The Guardian, 27 August 2010. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/aug/28/anne-lister-by-emma-donoghue
2. Jill Liddington, ed. Female Fortune: Land, Gender and Authority: The Anne Lister Diaries and Other Writings, 1833-36, River Orams Press, 1998, p. 242.
3. Helena Whitbread, ed. The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, Virago, 2010, p. 124.
4. Anne Choma, Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister, Penguin Books, 2019, p. 56.
5. All report quotes taken from The physical and moral condition of the children and young persons employed in mines and manufactures: Illustrated by extracts from the reports of the commissioners for inquiring into the employment of children and young persons in mines and collieries, and in the trades and manufactures. . ., Published for Her Majesty's Stationery Office, by John W. Parker, 1843, pp. 1-3, 6.
6. Secret Diaries, p. 292.
7. Secret Diaries, pp. 293-294.
8. Secret Diaries, pp. 295-296. It seems doubtful that Miss Pickford was forever barred from Anne's secret; she seems to have understood it immediately. On reintroducing herself to Anne (they had first met in Bath a decade earlier), Miss Pickford told her "she had often thought I should be congenial with herself."
9. Kit Heyam, "The Liberating and Sexual Potential of Gender Nonconformity, circa 1611," Literary Hub, 15 September 2022. https://lithub.com/the-liberating-and-sexual-potential-of-gender-nonconformity-circa-1611/
10. Emma Donoghue, Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801, HarperCollins, 1993, p. 67.
11. Donoghue, Passions Between Women, p. 65.
12. Helena Whitbread, ed. No Priest But Love: Excerpts from the Diaries of Anne Lister, 1824-1826, New York University Press, 1992, p. 49.
13. Secret Diaries, p. 257.
14. Quoted in Secret Diaries, p. xiv.
15. Jill Liddington, Presenting the Past: Anne Lister of Halifax 1791–1840, Pennine Pens, 1994, pp. 18-21.

"Captain Tom": Anne Lister, part 5

Anne Lister by John Horner, ca. 1830s. Image source: Calderdale Museums: Shibden Hall Paintings

A continuation of "Who taught you to kiss?": Anne Lister, part 4

From Paris to Copenhagen

Five months after Ann Walker had been bundled off to her sister and brother-in-law in Scotland—"'Heaven be praised,' said I to myself as I walked homewards, 'that they are off & that I have got rid of her & am once more free'" (18 February 1833)—Anne Lister headed to the continent. [1]

Her plan was to travel overland from Paris through Germany to Copenhagen. It took a full month and was hillier and at least four days of carriage travel longer than the standard itinerary through Antwerp and Amsterdam (and two weeks longer than taking a boat from Amsterdam). Her travel companion was 24-year-old Sophie Ferrall, a "pretty looking," "nice, sensible girl," whom she "liked. . .very well" (2-3 August 1833). Midway through the journey Anne had begun her standard seduction routine: "Playing with Miss Ferrall. Very good friends now. She sits on my knee tonight and has kissed me these three nights but I do it all very properly" (6 September 1833). But by the end of the journey Miss Ferrall's charms seem to have worn thin. On the eve of their arrival Anne wrote that she "was the most disagreeable girl I ever saw" (17 September 1833). [2]

Anne planned to stay in Copenhagen until the spring, and made use of her connections with Vere Cameron's sister Lady de Hageman and Sophie Ferrall's sister Countess Blucher to get introduced at the Danish court. But in late November Anne received word that her aunt's health was precarious. She returned to England, which involved a terrifying two-week voyage on stormy seas (and much seasickness).

When she arrived at Shibden in late December she received two surprises. The first was that her aunt was not in danger of imminent death. Anne wrote to Lady Louisa Stuart, "Found my aunt a great deal better than it was possible to expect from the very alarming accounts I had received" (21 December 1833). Aunt Anne would live for nearly three more years, dying at age 71 in October 1836. [3]

Anne's second surprise was that Ann Walker had returned from Scotland to Halifax. The two women reunited in early January at Lidgate. But Anne was wary of Ann's continued vacillation and low spirits. "The fact is, she is as she was before. . .I need to take someone with more mind and less money. . .she would be a great pother" (Sunday 5 January 1834). [4]

Anne hoped that a stay under the care of Dr. Stephen Belcombe, Mariana Lawton's brother, might help Ann's continued melancholy. It would also separate Ann from relatives who might object to the changes Anne was pressing her to make in her will. Each woman was to grant the other a life interest in her estate, a change that would ensure Anne's control over Ann's income in the event of her death, and vice versa. In mid-January Anne took Ann to York and left her in lodgings arranged by Dr. Belcombe at Heworth Grange.

The symbolic marriage

Despite her misgivings, Anne continued to press for commitment, and eventually Ann agreed that the couple would exchange rings:

Wednesday 12 February 1834: She is to give me a ring & I her one in token of our union. . . [5]

When the time for the ring exchange came, the gold band Anne wore as a symbol of her engagement to Mariana was repurposed for her new relationship with Ann:

Thursday 27 February 1834: I asked her to put [on my finger] the gold wedding ring I wore (and left her sixpence to pay me for it) [symbolically making it a gift when Ann returned it]. She would not give it me immediately but wore it till we entered the village of Langton and then put it on my left third finger in token of our union—which is now understood to be confirmed for ever tho' little or nothing was said. [6]

Anne gave Ann an onyx ring. Later in the 19th century onyx would be used in mourning jewelry, but in 1834 the association wasn't as established. Still, it seems something of an odd choice, until we remember that black was Anne's customary color: she wore it on almost every occasion.

Whether Ann thought of the ring exchange as a symbolic marriage in the same way as Anne isn't entirely clear. Anne had been urging Ann to move to Shibden permanently and rent out Lidgate, but Ann hesitated at taking such an irrevocable step:

Saturday 8 March 1834: Letter (3 pages and 2 1/4 pages crossed) from Miss Walker, Heworth Grange. . .'I am thinking about Lidgate, and will say more when I write next—will it be wise to irritate or brave public opinion just now? For the same reason, ought or can I accept your kind proposal about Shibden?' Her usual indecision—does she mean to make a fool of me after all?. . .Gave me (that is, bought for sixpence and put it on again) my ring languidly—and now declines taking the straight course of shewing our union, or at least compact, to the world. . .Does this seem as if she really thought us united in heart and purse? [7]

Perhaps Ann's reluctance to make their connection public made Anne determined to force the issue. While Ann was under Dr. Belcombe's care in York, Anne suggested that the two women undertake another symbolic ritual: taking communion together. (Anne had also shared communion with Mariana; see "I was now sure of the estate": Anne Lister, part 3.) On Easter Sunday they attended services at Holy Trinity Church Goodramgate, just a hundred yards from York Minster:

Sunday 30 March 1834: At Goodramgate Church at 10 35/"; Miss W— and I and [Anne's servant] Thomas staid the sacrament. . .The first time I ever joined Miss W— in my prayers—I had prayed that our union might be happy—she had not thought of doing as much for me. [8]

Interior of Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York. Image source: York Civic Trust

On Tuesday 24 July 2018 a blue plaque commemorating this event was installed at the Goodramgate entrance to the Holy Trinity churchyard. However, the plaque immediately excited controversy.

Original blue plaque commemorating Anne Lister and Ann Walker's communion. Photo credit: Keith Seabridge. Image source: BBC News

Julie Furlong, a lesbian feminist activist from Leeds, led a petition campaign to address what she saw as lesbian erasure in the wording of the plaque. She wrote, "Anne Lister was, most definitely, gender non-conforming all her life. She was also, however, a lesbian." It was also noted that the outer-to-inner colors of the rainbow border of the plaque reversed the top-to-bottom order of the colors on the Gilbert-Baker-designed rainbow flag. I'll also mention that identifying Anne Lister as an "entrepreneur" is stretching a point: she was a landowner whose income was mainly derived not from her coal-mining or business schemes, but from the rents she charged her tenants. [9]

The York Civic Trust quickly apologized, and after further consultation with the Yorkshire LGBTQ+ community, unveiled a revised plaque on 3 April 2019, the 228th anniversary of Anne Lister's birth.

Second blue plaque commemorating Anne Lister and Ann Walker's communion. Image source: York Civic Trust

The wording of the second plaque is also problematic. Anne Lister would not have thought of herself either as a lesbian (since the term was not used in the sense of female homosexual until the late 19th century), or primarily as a diarist—but, of course, that's how we think of her today.

Travel abroad and Ann Walker's move to Shibden

During Ann's stay in York, Anne gradually wore her down about travelling abroad, renting out Lidgate, and moving to Shibden Hall. This would become a recurring pattern in their relationship: Anne, the stronger personality and the more determined partner, pressing a reluctant Ann until she finally agreed, or at least acquiesced, to her plans.

At the end of May 1834, Anne removed Ann from Dr. Belcombe's care.

Friday 30 May 1834: I think Dr. B— seems now aware of the business between Miss W— and myself. [10]

Which "business" did Anne think that Dr. Belcombe understood: that the two women were sexual partners, or that Ann Walker had supplanted his sister Mariana as Anne's intended life companion? Whatever his understanding, he began to distance himself from the couple.

Meanwhile, Anne and Ann stopped briefly at Shibden, where Anne gave the steward Samuel Washington (who conveniently worked both for her and for Ann) orders to find a tenant for Lidgate. The two women then travelled to London, where Anne made the rounds of her aristocratic friends, but again without Ann. This suggests that among these women of higher social status it was now Anne who was concerned about revealing their union.

After London it was on to Paris and then Mont Blanc on the French-Italian border.

Monday 21 July 1834: Never in my life saw such a fidget in a carriage—she was in all postures & places till at last she luckily fell asleep for about an hour. [11]

Ann was clearly not the intrepid traveller Anne hoped for in her life companion.

At the end of August they arrived back at Shibden Hall. Ann's move out of Lidgate and into Shibden had been managed smoothly and was now a fait accompli, making it difficult for Ann's relatives to intervene. They weren't happy about it.

Thursday 4 September 1834: [During a call at Shibden, Ann's cousin] Mr W[illiam] P[riestley] mentioned Miss W—'s being here, and said how long she would remain was another thing. Seemed in bad temper about it; said A— had not consulted with any of her friends—had not mentioned her intention even to her aunt of Cliff-hill—evidently bitter against me.

Monday 8 September 1834: A— & I off to. . .Cliff-hill, and brought A— away at 5 35/"—no shaking hands with her aunt who had been crosser than ever. How tiresome! Gets upon poor A—'s nerves and undoes all good. Surely she will cease to care for such senseless scolding by and by—all sorts of bitterness against me. [12]

Ann's aunt, concerned that Anne Lister would inherit Ann's property, soon cut her niece out of her will.

The 1835 general election

On 29 December 1834 Parliament was dissolved and a general election was called; the election campaign in Halifax was hotly contested. The 1832 reform bill had expanded the franchise to male tenants who paid at least £50 a year in rent (still a small fraction of the population), and created Halifax as a new borough with two Parliamentary seats. Each elector could cast a vote for up to two candidates; voting for just one candidate, and so denying your second vote to one of the other candidates, was called "plumping," while voting for more than one candidate was called "splitting."

This new system created possibilities for the manipulation of rents to increase a landlord's influence. One of Anne Lister's tenants, Charles Howarth, paid an annual rent of £46. According to his later testimony, Anne raised his rent to £50, qualifying him as a West Riding elector, and then reimbursed him £2 every half year. Ballots were not secret—the names of electors and how they had voted were recorded in public "poll books"—and Anne and other landlords put intense pressure on their enfranchised tenants to vote for Tory candidates. [13]

Poll book for the Halifax borough election, 5 January 1835, "A correct list of all the electors who polled, distinguishing the candidates for whom they voted." Image source: From Weaver to Web: Online Visual Archive of Calderdale History

There were three candidates for the two Halifax seats: the incumbent Whig MP, Charles Wood; the Radical reform candidate Edward Protheroe; and the Tory candidate James Stuart Wortley, Lady Stuart's nephew and the great-great-grandson of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The Whigs and Radicals ("yellows") were allied against the Tories ("blues"). Nominations of the candidates and a show of hands favoring Wood and Protheroe took place at Halifax Piece Hall on Monday 5 January; Wortley then called for a poll, that is, an individual counting of the votes, which was held over the next two days.

Archibald James Stuart Wortley, engraving by William Holl Jr, after George Richmond, mid 19th century. Image source: National Portrait Gallery London

After the first day of polling Wood had a comfortable lead, and Protheroe was in second place; Wortley trailed Protheroe by more than a dozen votes. The second seat was still up for grabs, and more pressure was brought to bear on electors; there were also fears of fraud and election-stealing.

Tuesday 6 January 1835: Sad rough work in the town—almost all the blue flags torn in pieces by the orange, radical mob. . .Told A[quilla] Green [one of Anne's tenants] I did not want anyone to change his opinion against his conscience for me, but I had made up my mind to take none but blue tenants. . .

Wednesday 7 January 1835: Had [a visit from her tenant] John Bottomley—he is a good staunch blue plumper—has behaved very well—paid him for carting etc £6.16.4. . . [14]

John Bottomley was probably not the only Halifax elector whose landlord suddenly remembered to pay him for past work.

Poll book for the Halifax borough election, January 1835, showing John Bottomley's "plumper" for Wortley and Rawdon Briggs' split vote for Wood and Protheroe. Image source: From Weaver to Web: Online Visual Archive of Calderdale History

At the end of the second day of polling the word came from the election committee: Wood had won re-election with 336 votes, and Wortley had edged Protheroe by a single vote, 308 to 307.

We none of us thought the Radicals would push us so hard. . .the town was in a sad turmoil—the windows, glass & frames of many of the principal houses, inns & shops (blues) smashed to atoms—the 2 front doors of the vicarage broken down—Mr [Christopher] Rawson's carriage (the banker with [whom] Mr Wortley had been staying) completely broken up.

Thursday 8 January 1835: Had [a visit from] Charles Howarth—he wanted something to drink for himself & others: 11 or 12 (John Bottomley etc) workmen & pitmen in honor of Mr Wortley's election. . .Off to H[alifa]x at 12 40/" down the Old Bank—at the bottom of it a yellow mob of women & boys—asked if I was yellow—they looked capable of pelting me. 'Nay!' said I, 'I'm black—I'm in mourning for all the damage they have done.' This seemed to amuse them, & I walked quietly & quickly past. [15]

The Radicals would take their accusations of bribery, intimidation and fraud to Parliament, but to no avail. In the next general election two years later Protheroe would run again and defeat Wortley by a wide margin.

"Captain Tom"

An attack on Anne came almost immediately after the election. Because it also implicated Ann Walker, it probably wasn't from a member of Ann's immediate family. More likely it originated from a disappointed Whig or Radical supporter, or from someone with whom Anne had had business disputes. Interestingly, there was someone who fit both descriptions. Rawdon Briggs was a former Whig MP for Halifax; Wortley had been elected to the seat he had held from 1832 through 1834. And Briggs was also an investor in the Calder and Hebble Navigation canal who had been on the losing side against Anne at a recent shareholder's meeting.

Saturday 10 January 1835: [Samuel] Washington took coffee with us, and with some humming and ah-ing, pulled out of his pocket today's Leeds Mercury containing among the marriages of Wednesday last: 'Same day, at the Parish Church H[alifa]x, Captain Tom Lister of Shibden Hall to Miss Ann Walker, late of Lidget, near the same place.' I smiled and said it was very good—read it aloud to A— who also smiled and then took up the paper and read the skit to my aunt. . .A— did not like the joke—suspects the Briggs—so does my aunt. [16]

Marriage announcement of "Captain Tom Lister, of Shibden Hall" to "Miss Ann Walker, late of Lidgate." Leeds Mercury, Saturday 10 January 1835. Image source: British Newspaper Archive

Wednesday was, of course, the deciding day of the election. The notice soon appeared in newspapers in Bradford, Halifax, and even York. In Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801, Emma Donoghue notes that "tom" or "tommy" was a slang term for "a woman who had sex with women." Donoghue quotes from the anonymous satirical poem The Adultress (1773):

Woman with Woman act the Manly Part,
And kiss and press each other to the heart.
Unnat'ral Crimes like these my Satire vex;
I know a thousand Tommies 'mongst the Sex:
And if they don't relinquish such a Crime,
I'll give their names to be the scoff of Time. [17]

"Crime" is used here in the sense of a sinful or shameful act: unlike male homosexuality, sex between women was not actually criminalized. 

Domestic dissension

Ann Walker was deeply religious, and her continuing sense that her sexual relationship with Anne was morally wrong was one of the many ways that the two women were dissimilar. That dissimilarity occasionally broke out in open dissension or small acts of sabotage. Two particular sore points with Ann seem to have been Anne's unwillingness to introduce her to her aristocratic friends in Vere Cameron's circle, and the solitary time Anne spent writing in her diary late into the night:

Wednesday 12 November 1834: F46° at 11 1/4 pm in my little dressing room, A— having taken away the key of my study [so] that I could not get in, meaning to make me by these means earlier in bed. [18]

Saturday 1 August 1835: . . .she did not like my not taking her to [visit Lady Stuart at] Richmond Park. . .She thought the sooner we parted the better. . .She by-and-by came round, kissed me etc. I took all well, but thinking to myself, 'There is danger in the first mention, the first thought, that it is possible for us to part—time will shew—I shall try to be prepared for whatever may happen.' [19]

This latter argument, probably referring to events of the previous summer when they visited London on their way to France, may have been a preemptive move on Ann's part; in August 1835 the two women were about to depart on another trip to London. But when they arrived in the city a few days later, once again Anne left Ann behind when visiting Lady Stuart, Lady Stuart de Rothesay, and Lady Gordon. Ann retaliated in one of the few ways available to her.

Saturday 8 August 1835: Home at 4 1/2. A— has locked up my journal—beside myself at the disappointment. [20]

Nonetheless, Anne went out by herself again that night to Lady Stuart's for dinner; Lady Vere Cameron was the only other guest. It would have made Ann even more furious to hear herself referred to as "my little friend," as Anne did with her London acquaintances.

There were also money disputes: Anne wrote that Ann was "queer about money" and "afraid I shall ruin her." Anne began to contemplate a future without her:

Friday 14 August 1835: A— sickish and reading the Psalms while I washed. She is queer and little-minded and I fear [for] her intellect. I must make the best of it—perhaps she will be with me as long as my father and aunt live, and then I see she will be no companion for me. I shall be at large again. [21]

Back at Shibden, Ann was clearly struggling. As the months passed the arguments between them continued.

Thursday 10 March 1836: A—. . .at last told me she had been unhappy the last two weeks—had not pleasure in anything, never felt as if doing right. Would not take wine—was getting too fond of it—afraid she should drink—was getting as she was before—afraid people would find it out, & began to look disconsolate. [22]

Jill Liddington thinks that "it" in the phrase "afraid people would find it out" refers to Ann's drinking; I wonder whether "it" relates either to her spiraling unhappiness ("getting as she was before") or to her sexual connection with Anne, about which she continued to have a powerful sense of guilt. Over this period and beyond many diary entries begin "No kiss."

The death of Jeremy Lister and the departure of Marian

On 3 April 1836 Anne was summoned to her father's bedroom at 4:40 a.m.; five minutes later he was dead. It was the morning of Anne's 45th birthday.

Sunday 3 April 1836: A— so low and in tears and her breath[ing] so bad, for she would take no luncheon—fancies she takes too much—that sleeping with her is not very good for me. Really I know not how it will end. At this rate I must give [her] up—she is getting worse and I cannot go on long without some amendment. [23]

Jeremy Lister's death meant that Anne's sister Marian would move out of Shibden and into Skelfler House in Market Weighton, which she had inherited. Anne had never liked Marian's presence at Shibden, a home Anne considered entirely hers. There was another issue as well: Marian had a long-term suitor, one Mr. Abbott. If they married and had children—Marian was not yet 40—it would complicate Anne's plan to give the unrelated Ann Walker a life interest in Shibden Hall. In the past Anne had done everything she could to discourage the match:

Monday 1 December 1834: She has made up her mind to marry Mr Abbott. . .I merely said she knew [what] I should think and what I should do. . .I said there would be no impropriety in her marrying six months after my father's death. . .not to stay long here after his death and not to announce to me her marriage—it would be enough [for me] to see it in the papers. . .that I sincerely wished her happy—that her best friend would probably [be] that person who mentioned me to her seldomest—and that, as for A— and myself, her (Marian's) name would not pass our lips any more. Marian was almost in tears—I could have been, but would not. Spoke calmly and kindly—said I should probably not tell my aunt as she would be much hurt and, as many things happened between the cup and the lip, perhaps the match might not take place—one of the parties might die. [24]

Kindness itself. In the end, whether or not Marian was willing to brave her sister's disapproval, she did not marry Mr. Abbott.

Changing the wills

Her father's death and her aunt's ill health gave additional urgency to Anne's desire for she and Ann to give each other a life interest in their respective estates. In early May they traveled to York to consult about their wills with Anne's lawyer Jonathan Gray. On the eve of the planned signing, Ann balked, and Anne was not above making veiled threats in order to convince her to go through with it:

Sunday 8 May 1836: A— thought it her duty to leave me—explanation—said I could not stand this—she must make up her mind and stick to it. . .The fact is, as I told her, she did not like signing her will. I told her she had best do it now and alter it afterwards. We should both look so foolish if she did not—it would make the break between us immediate—she had better take time [to think about it]. At last she saw, or seemed to see, her folly and said with more than usual energy she really would try to do better. [25]

The wills were signed the next day. After they were signed, Anne decided to make a codicil to enable Ann to sell some of the Shibden properties, if necessary, in case Anne died with substantial debts. Generally a life-interest would not include the ability to sell any of the property; perhaps Anne did this to calm Ann's fears that her own estate might end up bearing the costs of Anne's spending on Shibden. The codicil was signed the next afternoon, and then the couple returned to Shibden, arriving about 40 minutes before midnight. Marian had left Shibden early that morning, avoiding any awkward goodbyes.

Anne Lister's death and the fate of Shibden Hall

In October 1836 Anne's beloved Aunt Anne passed away, leaving Anne in full possession of the Shibden estate and its income. She did not have many years to enjoy it, however. In June 1839 she and Ann left on an extended trip to Russia. They travelled for more than a year, taking in St. Petersburg and Moscow and then heading further south. By the late summer of 1840 they had arrived at Kutaisi in the Imereti region of western Georgia. There a catastrophic accident occurred: Anne was apparently bitten by a disease-carrying tick and died a few days later of a raging fever. She was only 49.

In mental energy and courage she resembled Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lady Hester Stanhope; and like these celebrated women, after exploring Europe, she extended her researches to the Oriental regions, where her career has been so prematurely terminated. We are informed that the remains of this distinguished lady have been embalmed and that her friend and companion, Miss Walker, is bringing them home by way of Constantinople for interment in the family vault. . . (Halifax Guardian, 31 October 1840) [26]

It took a full six months for Anne Lister's coffin to make it back to Halifax. The Leeds Times and other local papers gave an account of the funeral:

Leeds Times, 1 May 1840. Image source: British Newspaper Archive

Ann Walker now received a life tenancy at Shibden Hall and a life interest in the Shibden estate rental income. However, the task of managing both her own estate and Shibden proved difficult. She and Anne had also been embroiled in a long-running dispute with her brother-in-law Captain George Mackay Sutherland over the division of the Walker estate jointly inherited by Ann and her sister Elizabeth. Sutherland also did not approve of Ann having given Anne a life interest in her portion of the estate (the life interest most likely would have gone to him instead, as a trustee for his son Sackville). With Anne dead, Captain Sutherland saw an opportunity to gain control of both the Walker and Shibden estates.

Ann's sister Elizabeth Sutherland, probably at the direction of her husband, brought in the lawyer Robert Parker and Ann's previous caregiver Dr. Stephen Belcombe to have Ann declared of unsound mind. Fifteen years earlier, Ann's cousin by marriage Eliza Priestley had confessed to Anne Lister that the family despaired of her sanity:

Thursday 28 August 1828: Miss Walker's illness likely to be insanity—her mind warped on religion. She thinks she cannot live—has led a wicked life, etc. Had something of this sort of thing occasioned by illness at seventeen, but slighter. The illness seems to in fact be a gradual tendency to mental derangement. [27]

And in 1822 Eliza Priestley's husband William made a comment to Anne Lister about his uncle John Walker, Ann's father: he said he was a 'madman...[who] blackguarded his wife and daughters' (Tuesday 9 July 1822). "Blackguarding" has a broad array of meanings, but chief among them is to behave dishonorably or immorally towards someone; it might involve anything from openly keeping mistresses to verbal, physical, psychological, or other forms of abuse.

Whether Ann had an inherent tendency towards mental illness, had been traumatized by abuse she had suffered from her father or the Rev. Mr. Ainsworth (see "Who taught you to kiss?": Anne Lister, part 4), or was just difficult and inconvenient, in 1843 she was taken from Shibden Hall. It was a forcible removal: a constable had to take a locked door off its hinges. Ann was sent to Dr. Belcombe's asylum near York, where Anne Lister's former lover Eliza Raine resided as well. Shibden Hall was occupied by tenants, and, after Elizabeth's death in 1844, by Captain Sutherland. He did not live there long, however: he died at Shibden in 1847, at age 49.

Ann lived until 1854. On her death at age 51, her 23-year-old nephew Sackville Sutherland inherited her half of the Walker estate, uniting it with his mother Elizabeth's portion. Since Ann's interest in Shibden Hall and its rents ended with her death, that estate now reverted to Anne's distant male relative John Lister, who was living in Wales.

In 1855 he and his family moved to Shibden, and on his death in 1867, his son John inherited. This is the John Lister who discovered Anne Lister's hidden, encoded diary, and after learning what it contained, refused to burn it, enabling us to read Anne Lister's incredibly rich, detailed, frank, but often unflattering record of her remarkable life.

Next time: "No historical interest whatever": Anne Lister, part 6

Other posts in this series:

• "I only love the fairer sex": Anne Lister, part 1
• "It was all nature": Anne Lister, part 2
• "I was now sure of the estate": Anne Lister, part 3
• "Who taught you to kiss?": Anne Lister, part 4

Sources for and works discussed in this series:

I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister, [1816–1824,] Helena Whitbread, ed. Virago, 1988/2010 (as The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister), 422 pgs.

No Priest But Love: Excerpts from the Diaries of Anne Lister, 1824–1826, Helena Whitbread, ed. NYU Press, 1992, 227 pgs.

Jill Liddington, Presenting the Past: Anne Lister of Halifax 1791–1840, Pennine Pens, 1994, 76 pgs.

Female Fortune: Land, Gender and Authority: The Anne Lister Diaries and Other Writings, 1833–1836, Jill Liddington, ed. Rivers Oram Press, 1998, 298 pgs.

The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, written by Jane English, directed by James Kent, starring Maxine Peake as Anne Lister, BBC, 2010, 92 mins.

Gentleman Jack, written and directed by Sally Wainwright and others, starring Suranne Jones as Anne Lister, BBC, 2019–2022, 16 episodes, 950 mins.

Anne Choma, Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister, Penguin, 2019, 258 pgs.

---

1. Jill Liddington, ed., Female Fortune, p. 72. As ever, the quotes from the diaries in italics were written in code.
   
2. Anne Choma, Gentleman Jack, pp. 219, 228, 229. According to Choma, " [In 1841] Sophie Ferrall went on to marry Federico Confalonieri, the Italian revolutionary. . .In the years after Confalonieri's premature death [at age 61 in 1846], she was able to count Rossini, Verdi, Liszt, Victor Hugo, Balzac and Alexis de Tocqueville among her acquaintances" (p. 229).
   
3. Gentleman Jack, p. 243.
4. Female Fortune, p. 85.
5. Female Fortune, p. 93.
6. Female Fortune, p. 95.
7. Female Fortune, p. 98. A "crossed" letter was one in which, as a paper- and postage-saving measure, the writer turned a page sideways after filling it and wrote additional lines that were perpendicular to the first ones.
   
8. Female Fortune, p. 100.
9. FiLiA podcast #30: Julie Furlong: https://www.filia.org.uk/latest-news/2019/7/17/filia-meets-julie-furlong. The discussion of the Anne Lister plaque campaign and Gentleman Jack begins at 35:57 and runs through 42:35.
10. Female Fortune, p. 107.
11. Female Fortune, p. 109.
12. Female Fortune, pp. 110-111.
13. Female Fortune, p. 51.
14. Female Fortune, p. 140.
15. Female Fortune, pp. 141-142.
16. Female Fortune, p. 143.
17. Quoted in Emma Donoghue, Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801, HarperCollins, 1993, p. 5. The Adultress was "Printed for S[amuel] Bladon, in Paternoster Row"; Bladon was probably the author.
    
18. Female Fortune, p. 126.
19. Female Fortune, pp. 185-186. 
20. Female Fortune, p. 186.
21. Female Fortune, pp. 186-187.
22. Female Fortune, p. 210.
23. Female Fortune, p. 227.
24. Female Fortune, pp. 131-132.
25. Female Fortune, pp. 233-234.
26. Quote from the Halifax Guardian from Helena Whitbread, ed., No Priest But Love: Excerpts from the Diaries of Anne Lister, 1824-1826, New York University Press, 1992, p. 206.
27. Gentleman Jack, p. 67-68.