Was Anne Lister unique as the only lesbian who kept a diary in code so that she could talk freely about her love-affairs with women? In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I was convinced that she was.
Imagine my surprise when in the summer of 2011 I heard of a present-day lesbian diarist, Natasha Holme, who had been writing in a secret code since she was a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.
I was immediately intrigued to think that two women, separated by some two hundred years, found it necessary not only to live a veiled life due to their sexuality, but were also both driven to record it all in minute and coded detail.
Although we had exchanged e-mails to begin with I first actually met Natasha when I gave a paper on Anne Lister at Queen Mary University in London. On our next meeting we talked about working on an article which would be a “compare and contrast” document, the core idea of which was an exploration of the similarities and differences, as diarists and as lesbians, between modern-day Natasha and Anne Lister, a woman who lived some two hundred years earlier.
Now, five years later, the original ‘article’ has expanded into a short book, entitled Secret Diaries Past & Present by Helena Whitbread and Natasha Holme. It is available both in print and as an e-book from Amazon.
Have you ever recorded any of your private life in code?
One Comment
Dear Helena Whitbread, Thank you for your comment following Anne’s journal entries 17th August 1823. Up to that point I was urging Anne, can’t you see through the behaviour of this woman? (M-), and you restored my equilibrium with your voice of reason. In fact your comments do put things into context and perspective, which is so helpful.