Post by Mitch on Aug 28, 2004 11:46:29 GMT
Anne Lister of Halifax (1791-1840)
Anne Lister's diaries and letters, thanks to dedicated researchers such as Helena Whitbread, Muriel Green, Phyllis Ramsden and now Jill Liddington, offer an invaluable insight into not only her family, friendships, her business acumen, her political relationships and her lesbian affairs - they also document in incredible detail her running of the estate at Shibden.
You can now view some of the diaries online thanks to a new important project in West Yorkshire to improve access to women's history for all - just go to
www.historytoherstory.org.uk
and click on the women's lives section, and here you will find Anne Lister, plus many other details on women's lives and work in Yorkshire. Thanks to painstaking work by Jill Liddington and Helena Whitbread, you can view original pages of the diary in a split screen on the web, with the typed translation alongside it.
You can also view the original manuscripts at Halifax Central Library, Northgate, Halifax.
Telephone: 01422 392630
Finding out about Anne Lister
Anne Lister began her diaries in 1806 when she was 15. By 1817 she was recording her life daily in her diaries, much of which was in secret code containing details of her lesbian relationships. She kept this diary, producing volumes of records, until her death in 1840 in Russia. She also wrote numerous letters which have also been preserved.
Anne was a social climber and educated herself in estate management, making sure that she was ready when she finally inherited Shibden Hall in Halifax in 1826. Anne had 'aristocratic ambitions', she travelled extensively, had a wide network of friends and managed her affairs, making money from leasing or selling land, and selling coal and stone. Anne's politics were 'high-Tory'. Although she had some sympathy for reformers in Halifax in the first half of the 19th century, she saw herself very much part of the landed gentry class, and spoke with distain of the 'new money' of the industrialists who were gaining power in Halifax.
Jill Liddington explains that the social context was shifting for Anne and her lesbian network who had managed to avoid detection because of their discretion and gentry class credentials. Victorian patriarchy was taking hold and women entrepreneurs were being frowned upon as contrary to the Victorian ideas of respectable femininity. As Liddington further suggest, nobody would dare challenge Anne Lister, a well-travelled independent businesswoman, except occasionally in times of crisis such as the 1835 Halifax election when the Tory candidate won by a very thin margin. These moments were used by opportunists seeking to use Anne's unofficial lesbian marriage to Ann Walker as a way to potentially erode her very effective competition in coal mining.
You certainly wouldn't celebrate Anne Lister's life for any radical left politics - she was an aristocrat through and through and totally unsympathetic of the poverty of the working class struggling to survive in Halifax during her time - as the Chartist momentum (a working class uprising as close to a revolution as we've every got in my mind in this country) was building strong around Halifax she was critical of it and totally unsympathetic, but it is interesting how she managed to live a lesbian lifestyle quite openly during this period.
Shibden Hall just outside Halifax - on a hill looking down notably!!!, built in 1420, and Anne's home is well worth a visit. Pop it on the list maybe!!!!!
For info on Chartism I'd recommend:
E.P. Thompson's 'The Making of the English Working Class' (first published 1963)
'The Remaking of the British Working Class 1840-1940 (Savage & Miles, 1994).
Dorothy Thompson's book, 'The Chartists' (1984) is also brilliantly clear and accessible.
Anne Lister's diaries and letters, thanks to dedicated researchers such as Helena Whitbread, Muriel Green, Phyllis Ramsden and now Jill Liddington, offer an invaluable insight into not only her family, friendships, her business acumen, her political relationships and her lesbian affairs - they also document in incredible detail her running of the estate at Shibden.
You can now view some of the diaries online thanks to a new important project in West Yorkshire to improve access to women's history for all - just go to
www.historytoherstory.org.uk
and click on the women's lives section, and here you will find Anne Lister, plus many other details on women's lives and work in Yorkshire. Thanks to painstaking work by Jill Liddington and Helena Whitbread, you can view original pages of the diary in a split screen on the web, with the typed translation alongside it.
You can also view the original manuscripts at Halifax Central Library, Northgate, Halifax.
Telephone: 01422 392630
Finding out about Anne Lister
Anne Lister began her diaries in 1806 when she was 15. By 1817 she was recording her life daily in her diaries, much of which was in secret code containing details of her lesbian relationships. She kept this diary, producing volumes of records, until her death in 1840 in Russia. She also wrote numerous letters which have also been preserved.
Anne was a social climber and educated herself in estate management, making sure that she was ready when she finally inherited Shibden Hall in Halifax in 1826. Anne had 'aristocratic ambitions', she travelled extensively, had a wide network of friends and managed her affairs, making money from leasing or selling land, and selling coal and stone. Anne's politics were 'high-Tory'. Although she had some sympathy for reformers in Halifax in the first half of the 19th century, she saw herself very much part of the landed gentry class, and spoke with distain of the 'new money' of the industrialists who were gaining power in Halifax.
Jill Liddington explains that the social context was shifting for Anne and her lesbian network who had managed to avoid detection because of their discretion and gentry class credentials. Victorian patriarchy was taking hold and women entrepreneurs were being frowned upon as contrary to the Victorian ideas of respectable femininity. As Liddington further suggest, nobody would dare challenge Anne Lister, a well-travelled independent businesswoman, except occasionally in times of crisis such as the 1835 Halifax election when the Tory candidate won by a very thin margin. These moments were used by opportunists seeking to use Anne's unofficial lesbian marriage to Ann Walker as a way to potentially erode her very effective competition in coal mining.
You certainly wouldn't celebrate Anne Lister's life for any radical left politics - she was an aristocrat through and through and totally unsympathetic of the poverty of the working class struggling to survive in Halifax during her time - as the Chartist momentum (a working class uprising as close to a revolution as we've every got in my mind in this country) was building strong around Halifax she was critical of it and totally unsympathetic, but it is interesting how she managed to live a lesbian lifestyle quite openly during this period.
Shibden Hall just outside Halifax - on a hill looking down notably!!!, built in 1420, and Anne's home is well worth a visit. Pop it on the list maybe!!!!!
For info on Chartism I'd recommend:
E.P. Thompson's 'The Making of the English Working Class' (first published 1963)
'The Remaking of the British Working Class 1840-1940 (Savage & Miles, 1994).
Dorothy Thompson's book, 'The Chartists' (1984) is also brilliantly clear and accessible.
