• Diary excerpts

  • From Anne’s diary, Friday 10th August 1832 (age 42)

    [The first time that Anne Lister put her thoughts in writing about the possibility of courting Ann Walker, the young heiress who lived at Lidgate in the neighbourhood of Shibden.]

    ‘… Thought I, as I have several times done of late, shall I try & make up to her?’

  • From Anne’s diary, Sunday 5th January 1834 (age 43)

    [After eighteen months of an on-and-off courtship, Anne was unsure about whether or not there could be a permanent relationship between them.]

    ‘…Miss W[alker] talks as if she would be glad to take me – then if I say anything decisive she hesitates to. I tell her it is all her money which is in the way. The fact is, she is as she was before [i.e. indecisive], but determined to get away from the Sutherlands and feels the want of me. But [I need to] take someone with more mind and less money. Steph [Belcombe – i.e. Mariana’s brother] is right: she would be a great pother [sic]. [I] have nothing serious to say to her – she wants better manning than I can manage.’

    [See also Jill Liddington’s Female Fortune. Rivers Oram Press. 1998. p.85.]

Posted on May 29, 2020

The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister Volume 2: No Priest But Love

By Helen Natasha Moore | Published: May 29, 2020

These diaries cover Anne Lister’s life from 1824-1826.

This journal starts with Anne’s trip to Paris. It is through her amazingly frank and detailed journals that we are able to enter into her adventurous life. The chronicling of her passionate affairs with other women would have startled her contemporaries. “I love and only love the fairer sex,” she wrote. The explicit accounts of Anne’s sexual contacts have a power to shock that has not diminished.

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