She was a woman exercising conscious choice. ‘ sense of self, and self-awareness, is what makes her modern to us. 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. Until then, Anne Lister’s lesbianism had been supressed or hinted at this was the first time her story had been told. 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. When this volume of Anne Lister’s diaries was first published in 1988, it was hailed as a vital piece of lost lesbian history. By resurrecting them and editing them with such loving attention and intelligence, Helena Whitbread has earned the gratitude of a whole generation’ EMMA DONOGHUE ‘The Lister diaries are the Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history they changed everything. ‘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
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