Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.89 AVERAGE
3.89 AVERAGE
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
fast-paced
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia, Mental illness, Lesbophobia
Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Toxic friendship, Abandonment
Minor: Death, Hate crime, Grief
adventurous
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
Anne Lister was a really interesting character and one I've been interested in learning more about even though I've never watched the show, Gentleman Jack, which was based on her diaries and brought her story into the mainstream. Anne was the owner of Shibden Hall, which is only about 10 minutes from where I live, so I was interested in finding out more about her. She's known as the "first modern lesbian" and much of what I've heard about her before now was about her relationships with women and how these parts of her diary were written in code.
As a lesbian in a time when male homosexuality was criminalised and punishable by death, she was an interesting character in history. She was comfortable with her sexuality and saw herself as "neither a man nor woman in society". She was born into a rich family so had the privilege of having the time and education for proper self-reflection and research into the topics that interested her, so over the years she had reconciled her feelings about her sexuality with her religion, her gender and her position in society.
There was so much in this book that was interesting about other parts of her life though - for example, although she was very progressive personally (being a successful female landowner and business owner was unusual at the time), she was also a proud Tory and very much against worker reform laws. The book was fair and unbiased about her, delving into both her positive and negative traits and into her classist, traditionalist views. She was ambitious, academic, logical, strategic, manipulative and wanted to raise her own position in society, but also refused to marry a man to do so. To me she felt like a complex but selfish person who did things on her own terms, but didn't generally look to improve the lives of others unless she loved them.
By the last third of the biography, it did get a little repetitive. I think this was because at this stage of the accounting, Anne Lister's relationship with Ann Walker stalled due to Ann Walker's mental health issues and her inability to commit to Anne publicly and permanently. But as this was a real relationship, the separation was messy and their feelings didn't just stop. So the to-ing and fro-ing continued even while Anne travelled abroad and had relations with other women before it reached a very sudden resolution at the end of the book.