The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister

Anne Lister was an upper-class English woman, who was born in 1791 and died in 1840. During her life she kept a journal, partly written in code. Her journals in their entirety run to four milloin words. It was her intention to destroy the journals before her death, but she died prematurely while travelling in Russia and the journals were saved intact at Shipden Hall, her home. It was only in 1887 that John Lister, the last member of the Lister family to live in Shipden Hall, decided to publish some parts of the journals in a local paper. The coded passages were not yet been deciphered and their content was unknown. However, John Lister and his friend, Arthur Burrell, a schoolteacher and antiquarian from Bradford, decided to try and decipher the crypthand passages. What they found out shocked these Victorian gentlemen to the core. In the coded passages Anne Lister described very honestly her feelings towards and relationships with other women. Mr. Burrell said that the journals should be burned, but John Lister understood them to be an important historical document and instead of destroying them hid the journals behind a panel in Shipden Hall. Mr. Lister died in 1933. Some time after the house opened as a museum. Prior to the opening there was an inventory of all the Lister documents, including the journals. They, together with other documents, now made the transition from private to public property. A copy of the key to Anne Lister's code was placed in the hands of Halifax's chief librarian, who kept it locked in his safe. A few people wórked with the journals in the years to come, but they omitted any reference to homosexual activities from any published material. Then in the early 1980s Helena Whitbread, a Halifax local, started working with the Lister journals. It was she who would finally bring to light also the coded passages of the journals. (Source: Introduction by Helena Whitbread in The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister)

The journals of Anne Lister are a very important part of not only lesbian history, but women's history in general. The entries published as The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister cover the years from 1816 to 1824. The journals make fascinating reading! The manners, friendships and feuds of a small English town told firsthand by someone who lived there make it all very real. And Anne Lister's honest accounts of her sexual and emotional relationships with women were endearing and hearbreaking, and sometimes frustrating :), and made me realise how similar to us people were back then. You might not like all of Anne Lister's ideas and opinions, she was actually terribly class-concious and held some very conservative views, but if you like your Jane Austen, you will also enjoy reading The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister. And for anyone interested in women's history, and especially lesbian history, this is an absolute must read.

There is also a movie titled The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister available on dvd. It's well worth watching and storyline follows the real journals pretty well, even if the moviemakers have changed some details in the story. The trailer is available on YouTube here.

I read this book for the GLBT Challenge.