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Anne Lister

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For the English natural history illustrator, see Anne Lister (illustrator).

Anne Lister
Anne Lister, around 1830, portrait by Joshua Horner
Born(1791-04-03)3 April 1791
Halifax, West Yorkshire, England
Died22 September 1840(1840-09-22) (aged 49)
Kutaisi, Russian Empire
Resting placeSt. Anne's Church Halifax Minster
NationalityBritish
OccupationLandowner
PartnerAnn Walker (1834–1840)

Anne Lister (3 April 1791 – 22 September 1840) was an English landowner, diarist, mountaineer, and traveller from Halifax, West Yorkshire. Throughout her life, she kept diaries that chronicled the details of her daily life, including her lesbian relationships, her financial concerns, her industrial activities, and her work improving Shibden Hall.[1] Her diaries contain more than 4 million words and about a sixth of them — those concerning the intimate details of her romantic and sexual relationships — were written in code.[1] The code, derived from a combination of algebra and Ancient Greek, was deciphered in the 1930s.[2][3] Lister is often called "the first modern lesbian" for her clear self-knowledge and openly lesbian lifestyle.[4] Called "Fred" by her lover and "Gentleman Jack" by Halifax residents, she suffered harassment for her sexuality, but recognised her similarity to the Ladies of Llangollen, whom she visited.[5]

Life

James Lister by Joshua Horner (1812–1884)

Anne Lister was the second child and eldest daughter of Jeremy Lister (1753–1836), who as a young man in 1775 served with the British 10th Regiment of Foot in the Battles of Lexington and Concord in the American War of Independence.[6] In August 1788, he married Rebecca Battle (1770–1817) of Welton in East Riding, Yorkshire. Their first child, John, was born in 1789, but died the same year. Anne Lister was born in Halifax on 3 April 1791. In 1793, the family moved to an estate named Skelfler House at Market Weighton. Skelfler was where the young Anne Lister spent her earliest years. A second son, Samuel, who was a close friend to Anne, was born in 1793.[7] The Listers had four sons and two daughters, but only Anne and her younger sister, Marian, survived past 20 years old.[6]

Between 1801 and 1805, Lister was educated at home by the Reverend George Skelding, the vicar of Market Weighton, and at the age of seven, she was sent to a school run by a Mrs Hagues and a Mrs Chettle in Agnesgate, Ripon. On her visits to her aunt Anne and uncle James at Shibden Hall, the Misses Mellin gave her lessons. In 1804, Anne Lister was sent to the Manor House School in York (in the King's Manor buildings), where Anne met her first love, Eliza Raine (1791–1869). Eliza and her sister Jane were the very rich daughters of an East India Company surgeon in Madras, brought to Yorkshire after his death. Anne and Eliza met and shared a bedroom aged 13 at boarding school, but Anne was asked to leave after two years. She rejoined the school after Eliza had left. Eliza expected to live with Anne as an adult, but Anne began affairs with Isabella Norcliffe and Mariana Belcombe, day-pupils at the school. In despair and frustration, Eliza became a patient at Clifton Asylum, run by Mariana's father Dr Belcombe.[8][9] 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 please me much."[10]

Shibden Hall, with the library tower added by Lister on the left

She inherited Shibden Hall on her aunt's death in 1836, but took charge of it from 1826,[11] and from it drew a reasonable income (some of it from tenants).[11] Her wealth allowed her some measure of freedom to live as she pleased.

In addition to income from agricultural tenancy, Lister's financial portfolio included properties in town, shares in the canal and railway industries, mining, and stone quarries. Lister used the income from this varied portfolio to finance her two passions, Shibden Hall and European travel.[12]

Lister is described as having a "masculine appearance"; one of her lovers, Marianna Lawton (née Belcombe), was initially ashamed to be seen in public with her because her appearance was commented on.[13] She dressed entirely in black[5] and took part in many activities that were not perceived as the norm for gentlewomen, such as opening and owning a colliery.[11] She was referred to as "Gentleman Jack" in some quarters.[14] Lawton and Lister were lovers for several years, including a period during which Lawton was married and had her husband's permission.[13]

Halifax Minster, where Anne is buried

Lister met the wealthy heiress Ann Walker in 1832. The women took communion together on Easter Sunday 1834 in Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York, and thereafter considered themselves married. The church has been described as "an icon for what is interpreted as the site of the first lesbian marriage to be held in Britain", and the building now hosts a commemorative blue plaque. [15] The couple lived together at Shibden Hall until Lister's death in 1840.

Walker's fortune was used to improve Shibden Hall and the property's waterfall and lake.[16] Lister renovated Shibden Hall quite significantly to her own design.[11] In 1838, she added a Gothic tower to the main house, to serve as her private library. She also had a tunnel dug under the building which allowed the staff to move about without disturbing her.[16]

Lister was the first woman to ascend Monte Perdido in the Aragonese Pyrenees, Spain (1830) [17] and in 1838 she went back to the Pyrenees with Walker and completed the first "official" ascent of the Vignemale (3,298 metres [10,820 ft]).[18][19]

Throughout her life, Lister had a strong Anglican faith.[20]

Death

Anne Lister died on 22 September 1840 aged 49 of a fever at Koutais (now Kutaisi in Georgia) while travelling with Ann Walker.[21] Walker had Lister's body embalmed and brought back to the UK, where she was buried in the parish church in Halifax, West Yorkshire, on 29 April 1841.[22] Her tombstone was rediscovered in 2010, having been covered by a floor in 1879.

In her will, Lister's estate was left to her paternal cousins, but Ann Walker was given a life interest.[22] After being declared insane, Walker spent some years in the care of Dr. Belcombe, and because of her mental state, was unable to make a valid will.[23] She died in 1854 at her childhood home, Cliff Hill in Lightcliffe, West Yorkshire.

More than 40 years after her death, while reporting on a dispute over the ownership of Shibden Hall, the Leeds Times in 1882 stated, "Miss Lister's masculine singularities of character are still remembered".[22]

Diaries

During her life, Anne wrote a four-million-word diary. It began in 1806 as scraps of paper, recording in secret code parcels sent to and from Eliza Raine, and eventually became the 26 Quarto volumes, ending at her death in 1840. In addition to her handwriting being incredibly difficult to decipher,[24] around one-sixth of the diary is encrypted in a simple code Eliza and she had devised, combining the Greek alphabet, zodiac, punctuation, and mathematical symbols,[13] and it describes in great detail her lesbian identity and affairs, as well as the methods she used for seduction. The diaries also contain her thoughts on the weather, social events, national events, and her business interests. The majority of her diary deals with her daily life, and not merely her sexuality,[11] and provides detailed information on social, political, and economic events of the time.

The code used in her diaries was deciphered by the last inhabitant of Shibden Hall, John Lister (1847–1933) and a friend of his, Arthur Burrell. When the content of the secret passages was revealed, Burrell advised John Lister to burn all the diaries. Lister did not take this advice, but instead continued to hide Anne Lister's diaries behind a panel at Shibden Hall.

In 2011, Lister's diaries were added to the register of the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme.[16][25] The register citation notes that, while a valuable account of the times, it was the "comprehensive and painfully honest account of lesbian life and reflections on her nature, however, which have made these diaries unique. They have shaped and continue to shape the direction of UK Gender Studies and Women's History."[25]

Lister's diaries have been described as part of a "trilogy of early 19th century diaries" by local women, covering the same period from different perspectives, along with those of Caroline Walker from 1812 to 1830, and Elizabeth Wadsworth from 1817 to 1829.[26]

Research

Work by Dorothy Thompson and Patricia Hughes in the late 1980s resulted in discovery of the first juvenile Lister diaries and decoding of the other two Lister codes.[citation needed] Hughes self-published Anne Lister's Secret Diary for 1817 (2006) and The Early Life of Miss Anne Lister and the Curious Tale of Miss Eliza Raine (2010), both of which make extensive use of other materials in the Lister archives including letters, diaries, and ancillary documents.[citation needed]

Helena Whitbread published some of the diaries in two volumes (1988 and 1992). Their graphic nature meant at first they were believed by some to be a hoax, but documentary evidence has since established their authenticity.[13] A biography by the academic Jill Liddington appeared in 1994. In 2014, a conference held at Shibden Hall focused on Lister's life along with gender and sexuality in the 19th century.[27] A biography by Angela Steidele in the German language was published in 2017.

In 1994, the first episode of the BBC Two series A Skirt Through History titled A Marriage featured Julia Ford as Anne Lister, and Sophie Thursfield as Marianna Belcombe.[28][29]

On 31 May 2010, BBC Two broadcast a production based on Lister's life, The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, starring Maxine Peake as Lister.[30] Revealing Anne Lister, a documentary featuring Sue Perkins, was broadcast on the same night on BBC Two.[31]

In 2012, on their second album, The Fragile, chamber folk duo O'Hooley & Tidow (Belinda O'Hooley and Heidi Tidow) released a song about Anne Lister, which is called "Gentleman Jack".[32]

In spring 2019 a BBC-HBO historical TV drama series, Gentleman Jack, starred Suranne Jones as Lister and depicted her life as “the first modern lesbian”. Penguin Books published a companion volume by the series' senior consultant, Anne Choma, which included newly transcribed and decoded entries from Lister's diaries.[33] The drama’s end credits acknowledge that it was “inspired by the books Female Fortune and Nature’s Domain” by Jill Liddington who also acted as consultant and whose own website summarises Lister’s extraordinary life as “dazzling worldly achievements plus unbuttoned lesbian affairs.”[34]

Plaque

In 2018, a blue plaque with rainbow edging and wording "Gender-nonconforming entrepreneur. Celebrated marital commitment, without legal recognition, to Ann Walker in this church. Easter, 1834" was unveiled at Holy Trinity Church in York to honour her; it was York's first LGBT history plaque.[35] The wording was criticised for not mentioning Lister's sexuality,[36] and in 2019, it was replaced with a similar plaque with the wording "Anne Lister 1791-1840 of Shibden Hall, Halifax / Lesbian and Diarist; took sacrament here to seal her union with Ann Walker / Easter 1834".[37][38]

References

  1. ^ a b "The life and loves of Shibden Hall's Anne Lister", BBC News, BBC, 25 May 2010, retrieved 6 June 2010
  2. ^ Brown, Jonathan (The Independent) (16 October 2009), "BBC Unveils Drama About Gentleman Jack – 'The First Modern Lesbian'", San Francisco Sentinel, archived from the original on 28 September 2011, retrieved 6 June 2010 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ Dempster, Sarah (1 June 2010), "The Secret Diary of Miss Anne Lister and 30 Rock", The Guardian, Guardian Media Group, archived from the original on 3 June 2010, retrieved 4 June 2010 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  4. ^ Chafee, Ellen (2002). "Lister, Anne (1791–1840)". glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. Archived from the original on 11 March 2007. Retrieved 16 March 2007. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  5. ^ a b Castle, Terry (January 1989). "Review: The Pursuit of Love". The Women's Review of Books. 6 (4): 6–7. doi:10.2307/4020468.
  6. ^ a b Dugdale, Sir William (1894). Dugdale's Visitation of Yorkshire, with Additions. W. Pollard & Company. p. 118. Retrieved 6 December 2018.
  7. ^ Green, Muriel (1992). Miss Lister of Shibden Hall: Selected Letters (1800–1840). Sussex, England: The Book Guild, Ltd. p. 18. ISBN 0-86332-672-2.
  8. ^ Hughes, Patricia (2010). The Early Life of Miss Anne Lister and the Curious Tale of Miss Eliza Raine.
  9. ^ Green, Muriel (1992). Miss Lister of Shibden Hall: Selected Letters (1800–1840). pp. 7, 19.
  10. ^ Whitbread, Helena (1992). No Priest but Love: Excerpts from the Diaries of Anne Lister, 1824–1826. new York University Press. p. 2.
  11. ^ a b c d e "The life and loves of Shibden Hall's Anne Lister". BBC. 25 May 2010. Retrieved 29 May 2010.
  12. ^ Liddington, Jill (1993). "Anne Lister of Shibden Hall, Halifax (1791-1840): Her Diaries and the Historians". History Workshop Journal (35).
  13. ^ a b c d Norton, Rictor. "Anne Lister: The First Modern Lesbian". Lesbian History. Retrieved 29 May 2010.
  14. ^ Mavor, Elizabeth (4 February 1988). "Gentleman Jack of Halifax". London Review of Books. 10 (3). London: LRB Ltd. ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 14 June 2010.
  15. ^ Harriet Sherwood (28 July 2018). "Recognition at last for Gentleman Jack, Britain's 'first modern lesbian'". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
  16. ^ a b c Crampton, Caroline (5 December 2013). "The lesbian Dead Sea Scrolls: Anne Lister's diaries". New Statesman. London. Retrieved 25 August 2014.
  17. ^ Saint-Lèbe, Nanou (2002). Les Femmes à la découverte des Pyrénées (in French). Toulouse: Privat.
  18. ^ Lister, Ann; Maury, Luc (translator) (2000). Première ascension du Vignemale: le 7 août 1838 (in French). Pau: Cairn. ISBN 2-912233-25-9. {{cite book}}: |author2= has generic name (help)
  19. ^ Ingham, Vivien (1968). "Anne Lister's Ascent of Vignemale" (PDF). Alpine Journal. 73 (316–317): 199. Retrieved 22 January 2011.
  20. ^ Clark, Anna (July 1996). "Anne Lister's Construction of Lesbian Identity". Journal of the History of Sexuality. 7 (1): 35.
  21. ^ Bray, Alan (2003). The Friend. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-07180-4. Retrieved 3 August 2008.
  22. ^ a b c "The Shibden Hall Estate". Leeds Times. 22 July 1882. Retrieved 5 February 2015 – via British Newspaper Archive.
  23. ^ "The Story of Anne Lister". Borthwick Institute for Archives, The University of York. Retrieved 20 July 2017.
  24. ^ Liddington, Jill (1993). "Anne Lister of Shibden Hall, Halifax (1791-1840): Her Diaries and the Historians". History Workshop Journal. 35 (1): 45–77. doi:10.1093/hwj/35.1.45.
  25. ^ a b "UK Memory of the World Register". UK National Commission for UNESCO. UNESCO. 2011. Retrieved 25 August 2014.
  26. ^ Trigg, W.B. (1943). Miss Wadsworth's Diary. West Yorkshire Archive Service: Halifax Antiquarian Society. p. 123.
  27. ^ Anne Lister Conference"The Inaugural Anne Lister Conference; women, gender and sexuality in the 19th Century". Archived from the original on 25 May 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  28. ^ BFI Database
  29. ^ BBC Genome
  30. ^ "BBC Two announces brand new drama: The Secret Diaries Of Miss Anne Lister". BBC Press Office. BBC. 11 November 2009. Retrieved 1 February 2010.
  31. ^ "Revealing Anne Lister". BBC Two Programmes. BBC. Archived from the original on 4 June 2010. Retrieved 10 June 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  32. ^ "Music and Performance: Interview with O'Hooley and Tidow". When Sally Met Sally. 12 September 2012. Archived from the original on 17 September 2012. Retrieved 15 September 2012. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  33. ^ Choma, Anne. Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister. PenguinRandomhouse. ISBN 9780143134565. Retrieved 1 March 2019.
  34. ^ Liddington, Jill. "Who was Anne Lister?". Retrieved 20 May 2019.
  35. ^ "Plaque in York honours 'first modern lesbian' Anne Lister". BBC News. 24 July 2018. Retrieved 28 July 2018.
  36. ^ "Anne Lister: Plaque wording to change after 'lesbian' row". BBC News. September 2018. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
  37. ^ "Video: York's rainbow plaque to Anne Lister is back – with the word 'Lesbian' front and centre". YorkMix. 29 January 2019. Retrieved 1 March 2019.
  38. ^ "Rainbow Plaque Unveiling | York Civic Trust". Retrieved 17 May 2019.

Sources

  • Choma, Anne, Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister. (Penguin Books & BBC Books, 2019)
  • Green, Muriel, Miss Lister of Shibden Hall: Selected Letters (1800–1840). (The Book Guild, Ltd., 1992)
  • Hughes, Patricia, Anne Lister's Secret Diary for 1817. (Hues Books Ltd 2006)
  • Hughes, Patricia, The Secret Life of Miss Anne Lister and the Curious Tale of Miss Eliza Raine. (Hues Books Ltd 2010)
  • Liddington, Jill, Presenting the Past: Anne Lister of Halifax, 1791–1840. (Pennine Pens, 1994)
  • Liddington, Jill, Female Fortune: Land, Gender and Authority: The Anne Lister Diaries and Other Writings, 1833–36. (Rivers Oram Press, 1998)
  • Steidele, Angela, Anne Lister. Eine erotische Biographie. (Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2017)
  • Vicinus, Martha, Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778–1928. (University of Chicago Press, 2004)
  • Whitbread, Helena, I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister 1791–1840. (Virago, 1988)
  • Whitbread, Helena, No Priest But Love: Excerpts from the Diaries of Anne Lister. (NYU Press, 1993)
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Anne Lister
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