hrjones's review against another edition
4.0
Most historic accounts of women who had same-sex desires or relationships with women show us only an outside observer's account. The motivations and feelings of the women involved are typically known only via their reports to others--a context where self-editing and self-censoring can be expected. This is why a record such as Anne Lister's can be so ground-breaking to our understanding.
Lister's diaries were never meant for any reader but herself. Key passages were encoded in a cipher to ensure privacy. And she engaged in deep and ruthless self-examination of her life and her desires, which is not to say that she was always successful at being honest with herself. This is no angel or saint. She was a snob. She regularly was less than honest with those around her, not only to protect her reputation but for all the usual casual purposes that grease the wheels of social interaction. Her notions of sexual fidelity are quite flexible. And even when she tries to be forthright with those closest to her about her long-term life plans, she flip-flops in her own heart so often that her messages are not merely mixed, they are pureed and homogenized.
Whitbread has edited two volumes of Lister's diaries, deciphering the writing, decoding the cipher, and excerpting the portions that provide a detailed view of her life and thoughts.
Lister's diaries were never meant for any reader but herself. Key passages were encoded in a cipher to ensure privacy. And she engaged in deep and ruthless self-examination of her life and her desires, which is not to say that she was always successful at being honest with herself. This is no angel or saint. She was a snob. She regularly was less than honest with those around her, not only to protect her reputation but for all the usual casual purposes that grease the wheels of social interaction. Her notions of sexual fidelity are quite flexible. And even when she tries to be forthright with those closest to her about her long-term life plans, she flip-flops in her own heart so often that her messages are not merely mixed, they are pureed and homogenized.
Whitbread has edited two volumes of Lister's diaries, deciphering the writing, decoding the cipher, and excerpting the portions that provide a detailed view of her life and thoughts.
manoushp109's review
3.5
read only the diary for the year 1816-1817 for class: rly interesting and good :D i never knew how many lesbians there were in the 1800s also anne is kinda funny even if i think she’s a bit problematic at times
aineg's review against another edition
2.0
Maybe if I was a historian this might have been of interest but for an entertaining read is was one boring slog. Having enjoyed the BBC series I looked forward to reading more about Anne Lister but the diaries are so mundane and uninteresting that they don't expand on what I already know about her.
ikahime's review against another edition
4.0
Totally fascinating. Was introduced like most people to Anne Lister via the BBC show Gentleman Jack, but am now jumping down the rabbit hole of all things Anne. I feel like Anne is the role model I wished I had known about, but grew up to be anyway. Can't wait to read more of her journals, as this one ends in her early 30s.
richardr's review against another edition
(This covers both editions of Anne Lister's diaries.)
One of the oddities about reading Anne Lister is gaining an insight into someone who created an identity entirely sui generis and how that is to be compared to how we see sexuality and gender now. That identity is certainly striking, amounting to a frank declaration that Lister only loved women and that the thought of sexual attraction to men was repulsive to her. If her sexuality is clear enough, her gender is perhaps less so. A plaque placed at a church where she and Ann Walker had pledged themselves to each other drew criticism for calling her 'gender non-conforming'and omitting the word 'lesbian' but there's no real way to be certain whuch description is more accurate. Lister certainly presented as masculine (with one lover being uncomfortable with the presence of a moustache) while Frued would have relished statements like 'If I had a penis, tho’ of but small length, I should surely break the ice some of these times.' This comes up on multiple occasions as when she is 'Thinking of Mrs Milne. Fancying I had a penis & was intriguing with her in the downstairs water-closet at Langton before breakfast, to which she would have made no objection.' Earlier she contemplates 'Supposing myself in men’s clothes & having a penis, tho’ nothing more.' The converse is also true, that she had an aversion to 'anything that reminded me of my petticoats.'
The pictures continues to be complex when one considers the social and political context. Lister was a landowner and accordingly held distinctly conservative views at a time when rioting and dissent were far from uncommon in Yorkshire. As well as being opposed to reform, she can equally be something of a prude, writing that a theatrical performance was 'beyond anything I could have imagined it possible to bring forward on the stage, particularly the Thèâtre Français. Certainly not a scene for English ladies.' A modern reader can't help but find it odd that a conversation between Lister and one of the Ladies of Llangollen consisted of decrying Lucretius on the grounds that 'He was a deistical writer... she knew he was heterodox. I observed that she might think all the classics objectionable.' The most striking comment is her denunciation of a man on the grounds that 'To me his voice is so feminine as to be distressing – the more striking because his appearance is not [at] all so.' The sole concession to liberalism in the diaries is an endorsement of the view that girls could be educated to the same capacity as boys, especially given that somuch of the diaries consist of Lister's autodidactism. Quite frequently she sees her relationships as essentially that of man and wife (although if this is how Maria Barlow saw it she was nonetheless relegated to the role of mistress). As such, Lister writes 'In plain English, she was too much like a mistress. She was not my wife.... On returning up the new bank, a man said, ‘Are them man & wife?’ Marianna & I both coloured but she laughed & said she did not mind it, nor do I think she did.'
One of the oddities about reading Anne Lister is gaining an insight into someone who created an identity entirely sui generis and how that is to be compared to how we see sexuality and gender now. That identity is certainly striking, amounting to a frank declaration that Lister only loved women and that the thought of sexual attraction to men was repulsive to her. If her sexuality is clear enough, her gender is perhaps less so. A plaque placed at a church where she and Ann Walker had pledged themselves to each other drew criticism for calling her 'gender non-conforming'and omitting the word 'lesbian' but there's no real way to be certain whuch description is more accurate. Lister certainly presented as masculine (with one lover being uncomfortable with the presence of a moustache) while Frued would have relished statements like 'If I had a penis, tho’ of but small length, I should surely break the ice some of these times.' This comes up on multiple occasions as when she is 'Thinking of Mrs Milne. Fancying I had a penis & was intriguing with her in the downstairs water-closet at Langton before breakfast, to which she would have made no objection.' Earlier she contemplates 'Supposing myself in men’s clothes & having a penis, tho’ nothing more.' The converse is also true, that she had an aversion to 'anything that reminded me of my petticoats.'
The pictures continues to be complex when one considers the social and political context. Lister was a landowner and accordingly held distinctly conservative views at a time when rioting and dissent were far from uncommon in Yorkshire. As well as being opposed to reform, she can equally be something of a prude, writing that a theatrical performance was 'beyond anything I could have imagined it possible to bring forward on the stage, particularly the Thèâtre Français. Certainly not a scene for English ladies.' A modern reader can't help but find it odd that a conversation between Lister and one of the Ladies of Llangollen consisted of decrying Lucretius on the grounds that 'He was a deistical writer... she knew he was heterodox. I observed that she might think all the classics objectionable.' The most striking comment is her denunciation of a man on the grounds that 'To me his voice is so feminine as to be distressing – the more striking because his appearance is not [at] all so.' The sole concession to liberalism in the diaries is an endorsement of the view that girls could be educated to the same capacity as boys, especially given that somuch of the diaries consist of Lister's autodidactism. Quite frequently she sees her relationships as essentially that of man and wife (although if this is how Maria Barlow saw it she was nonetheless relegated to the role of mistress). As such, Lister writes 'In plain English, she was too much like a mistress. She was not my wife.... On returning up the new bank, a man said, ‘Are them man & wife?’ Marianna & I both coloured but she laughed & said she did not mind it, nor do I think she did.'
caseythecanadianlesbrarian's review against another edition
4.0
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/
cassandrat's review against another edition
4.0
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.
tesch18's review against another edition
4.0
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.
carriegessner's review against another edition
5.0
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.
kl92620's review against another edition
4.0
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.
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