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3.96 AVERAGE
3.96 AVERAGE
The Diaries of Anne Lister is definitely the oldest “lesbian” book I’ve read to date. I’m putting lesbian in quotation marks because what is actually the most fascinating things about the diary is how Anne Lister explores her attraction to women and her sexual identity in a time before sexuality was such a defining characteristic for our identities and before the word lesbian even existed with our contemporary understanding of it (if anyone as nerdy as me is wondering, “lesbian” was first used in 1890 as “female homosexual,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary—so it’s really a relatively new word!). Back to Anne Lister: she was an upper-class Englishwoman living in Halifax and Shibden Hall, West Yorkshire in the early 1800s who kept a very comprehensive diary of her life, a significant amount of which was written in a code that Lister herself had created....
see the rest of my review here: http://lesbrary.com/2012/04/20/casey-reviews-i-know-my-own-heart-the-diaries-of-anne-lister-1791-1840-edited-by-helena-whitbread/
see the rest of my review here: http://lesbrary.com/2012/04/20/casey-reviews-i-know-my-own-heart-the-diaries-of-anne-lister-1791-1840-edited-by-helena-whitbread/
The HBO show Gentleman Jack made me curious about the primary documents and recorded personality of Anne Lister. There are a few books with collections of her diaries, and this book gives about eight years of entries (1816-1824) of 25 to 33 year old Anne Lister and her many crushes. If you want to know more about the show, I recommend "Female Fortune Land, Gender and Authority The Anne Lister Diaries and OTher Writings, 1833-36". That publication has illustrations, background, and edits out the boring parts. It also starts with Anne's relationship with Ann Walker and her coal dealings. There is very little beyond love affars in 1816-1824. It was amazing how she seemed to fawn over a different woman every season and maintain so many relationships. I also noted that some events from the show were not concurrent at all. I recommend reading the diaries over a long period just every once in a while, because it gets a bit tedious. Most entries describe who she talked to each day, what reading or writing or studying she did, which woman she slept with or not, and mending clothes. I really liked that the coded portions are in italics. Anne seemed to code anything about money, mending underclothes, and sex.
Took me 3.5 yrs to read, but worth it! It's a primary source, so not super compelling in of itself, but I'm very very glad I read it.
This is a fascinating look into Anne Lister's life, but I'm glad I read it after watching the show and reading the companion book, which gave me better context for this. There's something weird and wonderful about reading words someone wrote 200 years ago and knowing they lived and breathed just as surely as I do now. I thought about that a lot as I read. And Anne came across as so confident in the previous media I'd consumed that glimpsing her insecurities and flaws was humanizing.
This is a collection of selected diary entries written by Anne Lister from 1816-1824. It mostly covers her daily experiences and personal reflections, so if you're for a thrilling page-turner this is definitely not it. However, I still found this book to be an interesting read because you really get to intimately experience the life of an upper class British lesbian in the early 19th century. It was interesting to learn about the lifestyle of upper middle class British families during this time as well as the way that Anne Lister was simultaneously respected by those around her for her genteel background yet ostracized for her masculine, unorthodox appearance and manners. Although this book didn't exactly keep me on the edge of my seat, I'm interested in checking out the second volume of this series for more.