Jane Ridley

The best-kept secret

When Lister’s shocked relative discovered her coded diary after her death, he promptly hid it again. Now Angela Steidele tells this bold lesbian’s full story

issue 24 November 2018

In the winter of 1820–1 a 29-year old woman named Anne Lister went to stay with some female friends who lived nearby. This was a visit between gentry families of the sort that Jane Austen describes in her novels. But there the resemblance ends. By the end of her stay Anne had flirted with four women and gone to bed with three of them.

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