The Secret Diaries Of Miss Ann Lister -edited by Helena Whitebread
„I love, & only love, the fairer sex & thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any other love than theirs.” These remarkable diaries are a piece of lost lesbian history. Anne Lister defied the role of womanhood seen in the novels of Jane Austen: she was bold, fiercely independent, a landowner, industrialist, traveler - and lesbian Anne Lister was an upper-class Englishwoman from Halifax, West Yorkshire. She lived from 1791-1840, and would not be particularly notable except that she left behind her diaries, and along with describing her daily activities, these journals also describe her romantic relationships with women. Not "vaguely romantic", but clearly passionate and sexually-involved affairs that she pursued exclusively with women, throughout her life. Remember Anne lived in an era when women, even upper-class, were to be married and won’t possess any wealth, all the wealth they would inherit from their families will be given to her husband as dowr...