Description

Longlisted for the 2019 Portico Prize

The extraordinary life of history’s first modern lesbian who inspired the popular television series Gentleman Jack.

Anne Lister’s journals were so shocking that the first person to crack their secret code hid them behind a fake panel in his ancestral home. Anne Lister was a Regency landowner, an intrepid world traveller … and an unabashed lover of other women.

In this bold new biography, prizewinning author Angela Steidele uses the diaries to create a portrait of Anne Lister as we’ve never seen her before: a woman in some ways very much of her time and in others far ahead of it. Anne Lister recorded everything from the most intimate details of her numerous liaisons through to her plans to make her fortune by exploiting the coal seams under her family estate in Halifax and her reaction to the Peterloo massacre. She conducted a love life of labyrinthine complexity, all while searching for a girlfriend who could provide her with both financial security and true love.

Anne Lister’s rich and unconventional life is now the subject of the major BBC TV drama series Gentleman Jack.

Publisher Review

A fascinating book about a remarkable woman -- Robbie Millen * The Times * Steidele's steely account of the lives behind the first rainbowed plaque is a triumph of truth over fantasy. Lister's extraordinary pioneering life deserves to be remembered -- Ruth Scurr * Guardian * Angela Steidele has written a Regency romp which gives a vivid glimpse into a hidden world of female eroticism * Spectator * Paints a vivid picture of a woman who lived and loved as she pleased * Stylist * Steidele might just be a German equivalent to Jeanette Winterson * New Books in German * Really a joy to read * Missy Magazine * What a character, what material! ...And now also a narrative phenomenon * Sueddeutsche Zeitung * A highly recommended book about a breathtakingly adventurous woman's life * Deutschlandfunk *