Vulgar History - Anne Lister： Regency-Era Power Lesbian

00:00:00.000 so hello and welcome to vulgar history of feminist women's history comedy podcast my name is ann

00:00:15.220 foster and we are in our regency era we're talking about various people who lived in

00:00:20.680 great britain during the early 1800s and how the time period is maybe not as much like

00:00:26.200 a Jane Austen novel, as you might have thought. Although last week we talked about Jane Austen

00:00:30.200 and you learned her life wasn't like a Jane Austen novel. So whose is really? Anyway,

00:00:34.200 we're talking about Anne Lister, queer icon. And I have two guests who know so much more

00:00:39.060 about this than I do. And that's why they're here. Our first guest is a returning guest.

00:00:43.020 Kit Hamm is a writer, heritage practitioner, and trans awareness trainer. Welcome, Kit.

00:00:48.180 Welcome back. Thank you so much for having me. Lovely to be here again.

00:00:51.620 And we have a first-time guest. Sarah Wingrove is an interdisciplinary scholar working across

00:00:57.140 literary studies, sociology, and histories of sexuality and gender, specializing in lesbian

00:01:01.760 and queer studies from the late 18th century onwards. Welcome, Sarah.

00:01:05.400 Delighted to be on the podcast.

00:01:06.880 Ann Lister. People listening to this podcast who've maybe never heard that name. So she was

00:01:10.220 a queer... Actually, you know what? Let's talk about this. What are our pronouns for Ann Lister? 1.00

00:01:14.320 What's the... Kit, just raise your eyebrows. What are we going with today?

00:01:18.520 it's a great question and you see in life um in my book before we were trans i use they

00:01:25.700 because i deliberately want to foreground the extent to which ann lister was certainly ambivalent

00:01:31.160 about womanhood i think or about what womanhood meant to her in her period um so i would argue

00:01:36.780 for either or perhaps both of those um what are your thoughts sarah i think i'm on the same page

00:01:41.860 in my work i generally use she her and that's just because as you said that's what she's using

00:01:46.820 in the journals in her in the remaining archival documents but i also don't see any issue with

00:01:53.020 using they they she like interchangeably with lister because i think as you said

00:01:58.040 i don't think that's inaccurate to describe lister i think ambivalent to gender is quite a good

00:02:04.860 quite good way of phrasing it so for people who don't know who ann lister is could either of you

00:02:09.660 just give a brief overview of oh who is this person why why do we know about her i'm gonna

00:02:15.040 don't let Sarah do that you're the expert and you should you could give a little context on

00:02:18.420 why Anne Lister is important and why what your area of study is I guess as well yeah absolutely

00:02:23.480 so Anne was born in on the 3rd of April 1791 in Halifax she lived a very complicated life a very

00:02:33.900 busy life really there's so many different words that are used to describe her primarily most

00:02:39.000 people know her as a diarist first um she was a traveler she was an entrepreneur so many different

00:02:45.560 words used to describe her a landowner is another quite key important one but i think the most

00:02:51.220 known sort of phrasing and sort of description of her is as the first modern lesbian is how she's

00:02:57.340 is how a lot of people know her something that i've noticed is a lot of times when that phrase

00:03:01.900 is used first modern lesbian no one cites where that's from and it's from um an online article

00:03:07.240 by Richter Norton, who is a LGBT historian. He wrote this article about Ann Lister in the sort

00:03:13.420 of early 2000s. I think it then went up on his website, I want to say around 2011, something

00:03:18.060 like that, probably corresponding with the TV film, The Secret Diaries of Miss Ann Lister.

00:03:23.940 But it is that blog post where he sort of uses that phrase the first time, and then it's been

00:03:29.560 picked up by lots of other people. That really tracks because Richter Norton is quite a fan

00:03:34.640 of using of i think he's really invested in finding the roots of modern queer identities

00:03:41.100 in especially the 18th century which is something i feel a bit complicated about so it's really yeah

00:03:46.700 really tracks that he's the origin of that phrase well and i wanted to just clarify sorry just in

00:03:51.180 terms of the diaries just again just imagining someone who's never heard of her before so i've

00:03:55.500 on the podcast my listeners will have heard other people where i'm like i talk about people from

00:04:00.100 history where it's like well we don't know they were roommates they were very good friends you

00:04:04.800 know those sorts of things or like she like this man wrote these passionate love letters to this

00:04:09.260 other man but men just wrote letters like that back then like we don't know what's going on in

00:04:13.920 the bedrooms of these people but ann lister we know in detail great what's happening every time

00:04:20.400 she gets in a bedroom with somebody else like she was having sexual relations with women we're not

00:04:24.700 just being like oh maybe like can you explain the diary Sarah yeah absolutely so she had so

00:04:30.480 in terms of my work so I look at her journals her travel journals her travel notes and her

00:04:35.560 correspondence and sort of connecting all those different archival documents and sort of

00:04:40.440 understanding how they interact with one another and this is I mean if we're talking about language

00:04:44.240 different people describe them in different ways some people say that they're her diaries

00:04:47.340 some people say that they're her journals again I generally describe them as journals because

00:04:51.700 that's how she describes them in in the text but again i don't think it's wrong to say diary

00:04:57.320 because that's also just the more popular term for what we have left of our archive runs over

00:05:03.280 five million words um about a sixth of it was written in a single replacement cipher which

00:05:09.320 she came up with um there's sort of some speculation whether she did that um in

00:05:13.560 collaboration with her first known partner eliza rain and yeah she uses that to obscure

00:05:20.560 significant parts of her journal, particularly anything to do with her body, anything to do with

00:05:25.560 her clothing, if there's anything that she deems as embarrassing about money, gossip. But then the

00:05:32.840 really key one that we all know is her intimate relationships with women. And the diaries, I think

00:05:38.220 this is also such an interesting thing. So there's so many people in history who wrote diaries like

00:05:42.160 this, and then they were like, when I die, burn this. Or descendants get rid of it, or nobody

00:05:47.300 found it. So can you explain how the diary still exists, how people were able to find it to decode

00:05:52.620 it? Yeah, absolutely. So Lister died quite suddenly. So we understand. So her last journal

00:05:59.840 entry is from the 11th of August, 1840. We know that she doesn't actually die until the 22nd of

00:06:05.780 September. So there's like, yeah, 41, 42 days in between that. We don't know what happened between

00:06:11.460 them, whether she was writing another journal that we haven't got back. But she died while she

00:06:15.760 and her partner, Anne Walker, were in Katesi, which is modern day Georgia, like very, very long

00:06:21.840 away from home. The group, I mean, I'm probably going to mention multiple times during this

00:06:26.120 podcast, the group in search of Anne Walker have done some incredible research about the journey

00:06:31.860 that Anne Walker took to get home, but also how she fought to get Anne Lister's body and her

00:06:38.300 journals that were there back home to Halifax. And it is, I mean, that in and of itself is a

00:06:43.420 a whole discussion that entire journey back because it took months and months and months

00:06:47.820 and she was a woman yeah traveling across europe by mostly by like a good chunk of it by herself

00:06:53.160 in the in 1840 but the journals so after ann walker died the journals were put into a cupboard

00:07:01.620 in shibden hall which was annister's home put behind a panel hidden away and then a descendant

00:07:07.340 of hers uh john lister ma who is i want to say a second cousin he inherits the house and he's

00:07:14.260 very interested he's an antiquarian he's very interested in history and in local history of

00:07:19.160 halifax so he starts transcribing all the journals and his friend arthur burrell who is another

00:07:26.420 member of the halifax antiquarian society starts helping him and i think i think this is really

00:07:32.000 lovely actually um the first word that they managed to crack is the word hope which i think

00:07:36.920 is delightful. But once they've cracked the cipher, they then start finding everything else

00:07:42.000 that's in the journals. And up until that point, so for several years, John Lister, MA, had been

00:07:47.980 publishing extracts of Lister's journals in the local newspaper saying like, oh, the life of a

00:07:53.260 lady 50 years ago. Isn't this so interesting? We have this really detailed description of what's

00:07:58.400 been happening in Halifax 50 years ago. So, I mean, we're so invested in Lister now, but even

00:08:04.180 people in the sort of late 19th century were also really interested in her journals as well

00:08:09.080 anyway once they find out what's in the journals and the fact that it's that she's having sex with

00:08:14.380 a lot of women and very intimate relationships with women uh arthur burrell initially says

00:08:18.820 you need to destroy these you need to burn them and thankfully for us john lister decides not to

00:08:25.520 do that he puts them back into um the paneled cupboard in chibden and they stay there until

00:08:32.000 after his death something to note is that arthur burrell did later say i think to an archivist in

00:08:37.440 halifax that he regretted suggesting that they'd be burnt and that he was glad that they weren't

00:08:42.960 burnt so a bit of a bit of a positive there anyway they go back into the walls and then once

00:08:49.460 he dies he leaves shibden shibden hall to the local council to be made into a like the land

00:08:56.220 to be made into a public park and so then you get muriel green who is um she's a she was studying

00:09:03.720 like library studies she goes through all of the papers that lister left and that they find in

00:09:10.500 these panels and she starts continuing this work she gets the code as well and starts transcribing

00:09:19.160 she specifically focuses on lister's letters but yeah thinking about that we are very very lucky to

00:09:24.640 have this as archive at all because there was that very serious risk of them being burned oh it's

00:09:29.300 just such a it's such a fascinating story of the right people finding them at the right time that

00:09:34.720 they remain because so so many people's papers are gone and like he said when he was first

00:09:39.160 publishing it there's so much that's interesting about them i mean especially today we're going to

00:09:42.640 focus on like the queer history and stuff but also just for anything to read a daily diary of

00:09:46.960 somebody in this time period it's fascinating just the the minutiae of it i would imagine

00:09:51.240 so much minutiae it's like the the reverse of last year i did an episode about um sally

00:09:58.160 hemings and thomas jefferson and thomas jefferson wrote plethorous amounts of diaries but they're

00:10:03.580 all just like here are the bank transactions i did today it's not interesting to me personally

00:10:08.740 but this is like she's like a true diary like people's thought like i would imagine there's

00:10:13.080 a combination of these are the bank transactions but also with like here's what's happening here's

00:10:17.820 everybody's talking about so if we're going to just kind of look at ann lister's life um in the

00:10:24.300 context of her era and she was a very singular person for the era this is not a typical person

00:10:29.560 living in england at this time um but her life i would imagine starts off like any sort of

00:10:36.480 wealthy right they're a wealthy-ish like they own property so i imagine it's a wealthy family

00:10:40.780 yeah sort of middling i think one of the things that lister talks about is that her father is

00:10:45.240 really terrible with finances so i think it kind of fluctuates over the course of her young adult

00:10:51.440 life and i think it is i don't think i'm wrong in saying this i mean correct me if i'm wrong

00:10:56.820 one of the reasons that she's able to inherit shibden is because she's able to persuade her

00:11:01.460 uncle to leave it to her rather than her father his brother partly because of her capabilities

00:11:08.160 financially i think that's right yeah and i guess i mean we can talk about the ways in which 1.00

00:11:14.080 her relationship with her money and her land makes her a problematic babe but like she shows

00:11:18.480 herself to be pretty adept with managing the estate right i think all the interesting stuff 0.96

00:11:23.200 really happens in her adult life but like what was her what was her childhood what was her education

00:11:27.360 she was i would imagine educated quite well just given where she was living and her family's

00:11:33.600 cultural role just some little school girl romances right and one of the places i take

00:11:39.600 people when i give my um walking tour of york's hidden queer history is king's manor girls school

00:11:44.120 where she was and there is some i like there's no proof it's anything to do with lister but there 0.63

00:11:47.580 is some lesbian graffiti um on the window of king's manor um with a diamond i cut this glass 0.89

00:11:53.480 with these lips i kissed the lass it was a girl's school that's girls who were kissing the lasses 0.90

00:11:57.500 um so they were all at it and um and lister with no exception right i don't know if you want to

00:12:03.180 tell some of that sarah yeah absolutely i mean she went to she was taught a little bit in halifax

00:12:09.480 i think it's in halifax or market weight and she's taught a little bit at home her brother her two

00:12:14.320 brothers get sent off to school she goes to the manor school and that's where she meets eliza

00:12:19.420 rain her first partner who was who lived uh 1791 to 1860 so how old how old is she in this when

00:12:27.800 this relationship happened like she's a teenager like is she more like 12 years old or is she more

00:12:32.620 like 18 years old yeah she starts at king's manor at the age of i think 14 yeah because she starts

00:12:38.020 So the journals, certainly the journals that we have start when she's 15.

00:12:43.260 The point that we have with the journals is that she's already left King's Manor.

00:12:47.600 Right.

00:12:47.840 So this is before 15.

00:12:49.960 Okay.

00:12:50.600 Yeah.

00:12:50.920 So the first line in the journal says it reads, Eliza left us.

00:12:55.300 And it's because she is already home.

00:12:57.620 And Eliza has been to visit during a break from school and has come to stay with them in Halifax.

00:13:03.180 and then has gone back to school or to york i don't remember which um but by that point lister

00:13:09.840 had left the school so when we're talking about her in terms of like relationships like the first

00:13:15.620 one we know of she's probably 13 14 or something like that yeah she starts the school when she's

00:13:19.740 14 she shares a room with eliza so yeah she's like 14 15 oh they're sharing a room yeah convenient

00:13:26.660 to themselves and what do we know about this relationship that doesn't end well for eliza

00:13:33.620 right not the best yeah i mean they're together for they're together for a little while um

00:13:42.400 they this was one of the things that i studied as part of my doctoral research was they take a trip

00:13:48.220 in 1809 so anne's 18 yeah 18 they both left school by that point and anne

00:13:56.080 um has persuaded her mother rebecca to take her to scarborough um because of her ill health

00:14:02.340 and just by chance and this is my reading of it just by chance they have to go and pick eliza up

00:14:07.220 and take her with them so they go from yeah exactly um they go from halifax up to york pick

00:14:13.960 eliza up on route um they also drop in and see before she goes and sees eliza they go and drop

00:14:20.160 in on her former teachers from the king's manor so another sort of idea that gets floated a little

00:14:25.520 bit in Lister studies is this idea that Lister was kicked out of school because of homosexuality

00:14:30.560 and her relationship with Eliza I haven't found anything to like really concretely prove that and

00:14:38.080 I know that other some of the Lister scholars more recently have said that they've gone through

00:14:43.120 everything that we have and there's there's no concrete evidence that Lister was kicked out

00:14:47.080 and actually the fact that I know that there's this conversation between Lister and her former

00:14:51.340 tutors that is very friendly. It doesn't seem like there was really any animosity that indicates

00:14:57.160 that she was kicked out. Anyway, they then go from York on to Scarborough. The only downside

00:15:03.640 is we don't have either of their records of what they did in Scarborough because Eliza didn't keep

00:15:09.400 any record whilst they were there. She just jumps from the day that she left York to the day that

00:15:13.500 she goes back. Can I ask a question as a North American person? Is there anything to do in

00:15:19.080 scarborough what kind of place is it is it like a beachside town this is a spa town um yeah okay

00:15:26.440 okay it's a place that people go often it's just like okay yes it's very much a health take the

00:15:32.400 waters yeah yeah take the waters to bathe in the waters and that might not necessarily mean

00:15:38.380 like getting in the sea for some people it did particularly for men it would mean going directly

00:15:43.240 in the sea um sometimes it would mean taking baths different specific locations in the town

00:15:49.880 so you'd go and see specialists and yeah drink the waters imbibe them but also bathe in them

00:15:56.440 depending on what your malady was really so this is a who who was ill at this point that they needed

00:16:03.160 to go to this town so lister has managed to persuade her friend a dr alexander that he

00:16:10.300 needs to persuade her mother Rebecca Lister to take her to Scarborough and around this time there

00:16:16.140 are a couple of instances of Lister sort of having like a couple of fainting fits like not feeling

00:16:20.640 very well um but also this is also around the time that she starts going out drinking with her

00:16:25.100 friends um and sort of staying out partying in Halifax essentially or sort of the early 19th

00:16:30.500 century equivalent of that um so I take it with a bit of a pinch of salt that she might well have

00:16:37.880 been sick but i think there's also a good motivation for her to also have this opportunity

00:16:43.260 to go on holiday with her with her partner with her girlfriend this reminds me of i'm just trying

00:16:49.380 to contextualize this for myself but in some places actually i don't know what the situation

00:16:54.060 is in england but in the united states where like cannabis is legal but only with a doctor's

00:16:58.980 prescription so you just so people get various like oh i i have whatever the various health

00:17:04.400 conditions that you go to your doctor and be like oh i have um anxiety and the doctor's like great

00:17:09.160 here's your cannabis prescription like it's the sort of thing where you have to kind of like have

00:17:12.440 a doctor sign off on it but they don't like give you a full exam to so for the doctor to say ann

00:17:18.120 lister needs to go to scarborough it's not like is this more like ann just really wants to go on

00:17:22.940 holiday with eliza but her mom won't take her unless the doctor says this is a really good idea

00:17:27.360 exactly exactly yeah that's the reading that i have of the situation and so much of what we know

00:17:34.580 about her is from her own diary do we know how this relationship was being understood by other 0.96

00:17:39.420 people at the time i'm just curious to know these like teenage lesbians like in a time when there

00:17:45.600 was very strong female friendship like did people how did people see them as just like another

00:17:51.540 example of like very strong female friends or did people see what was going on or do you know

00:17:56.160 I'm not so sure about with Eliza and Lister. I mean, we do have bits of Eliza's journal from this period and we also have correspondence between them.

00:18:05.580 We also have correspondence between Eliza and Lister's mother and the way that it's like one of the ways that I know that Eliza went on that trip is because of a letter that she sends to Rebecca Lister where she says, yes, I will come along with you.

00:18:18.040 I'm very happy to go along with you um and the way that she describes her relationship with Lister

00:18:24.680 to Lister's mom is really I mean if we're looking at Eliza's writing style she can be quite

00:18:31.460 flamboyant she can be quite dramatic at times and the way that yeah the way that she talks about her

00:18:37.380 connection with Lister is quite I think probably from her mom's perspective it might be considered

00:18:42.860 a bit a bit more than just friendship so they go on this trip to scarborough um and then

00:18:49.400 how does this well you said the relationship doesn't end well for eliza what what happens

00:18:54.440 between these two so a couple of years later so they've not seen each other as much over the last

00:19:00.580 couple of years because lister's not in york anymore she's traveling around a little bit eliza's

00:19:04.400 traveling around as well and we don't know exactly when lister met mariana lawton but well marina

00:19:11.240 Belcom at that point but she becomes friends with Isabelle Norcliffe or Tibb as she's known in the

00:19:17.340 tv show Eliza introduces Lister to Tibb and then Tibb introduces Lister to Mariana Belcom and it's

00:19:25.400 at this point that Eliza starts to feel pushed out and she doesn't feel like they're in as close

00:19:31.680 a relationship anymore she I mean she's used the term so she she calls Lister Wellie in the letters

00:19:38.820 so that's her nickname for her a lot of lister's partners have nicknames for her but that is around

00:19:44.040 the time that their relationship i think it already been becoming a bit more distant around

00:19:49.220 that point anyway but that is really where you get the like a bit of jealousy and yeah that just

00:19:55.980 breaking off and then she's going and pursuing tib and she's going and pursuing marianna lawton

00:20:00.360 at that point actually i have a question because i think i came across this a bit when i was reading

00:20:04.740 up what what was ann lister's type it's like kind of conventionally feminine women is that correct

00:20:12.660 i'd say so there's a couple of things where some of the ways that she describes the women that she

00:20:18.860 likes is quite we'd consider it quite misogynistic now um i think she did like women that challenged

00:20:25.820 her but not too much so she liked so she liked women that were intelligent but not more intelligent

00:20:33.300 than her like she liked to feel that she was impressing them with her knowledge but yeah i

00:20:39.220 think i think that's kind of consistent it's a bit of a mansplainer i guess a little bit yeah but

00:20:44.900 then and there are instances i think where eliza in her letters to list is saying like oh please

00:20:49.140 explain this to me so is that them sort of being like quite enamored by her intelligence and wanting

00:20:56.500 to learn from her and i think she just really likes being able to teach people it's can we talk

00:21:01.300 about um and maybe this is a question for you kit as well is ann lister's physical presentation how

00:21:07.840 she was how she would dress how she did her hair and how that she wasn't blending in basically right 0.99

00:21:15.620 yeah absolutely this is one of the aspects of ann's what i call kind of ambivalence about gender

00:21:20.480 um so she becomes known for dressing kind of mostly in black which is very much how men dress

00:21:25.080 not how women dress in and in a more masculine style and not conforming to norms of femininity

00:21:30.280 um of that period and i suppose i think that in the kind of 18th early 19th century paradigm of

00:21:37.860 sexuality that like she's understanding herself in that is a part of her attraction to women is

00:21:43.420 being more masculine that's kind of what it means to be attracted to femme women is that

00:21:48.260 she presents and understands herself in a more masculine way um yeah i don't know if you want

00:21:53.200 i don't think so i know there's a bit where and again i'm going back to i'm going back scarborough

00:21:58.200 um there's a little instance where she's um it's a couple of days before she and her mother set

00:22:04.700 off to go to york and she decides to go and get a new pair of shoes for this for this holiday

00:22:09.780 and i forgot what they're called but she tries to get these sort of military style half shoes

00:22:15.600 like half boots and i think of that as being quite compelling because it is almost like this

00:22:20.720 in between between a boot and a shoe which the boots being a very a very masculine shoe and then

00:22:27.500 the then slippers being a much more feminine shoe that women were wearing it's a lot harder to walk

00:22:32.000 around in a slipper because it'd usually be made of things like silk but i think it's interesting

00:22:36.740 that yeah when she's on her way to scarborough she contemplates buying these shoes that are

00:22:41.340 in of in of themselves in the way that they're structured kind of playing with gender a little

00:22:45.120 bit that's so perfect that's so perfect that she that she's just like i'm not a slipper i'm not a

00:22:51.180 boot i'm kind of this other third yeah but then she does that's usual later on yeah yeah i mean 0.99

00:22:57.480 apart from anything else she walks really long distances right like you need a boot

00:23:00.880 just practically yeah well and this is where i really want to just to really understand

00:23:07.280 in the context of this society she's living in do you think it's because she is um i don't know

00:23:13.860 i know that the class system is like very i don't fully understand it but i know it's very

00:23:19.240 part of british society and has always been is she an upper class person or is she like a middle

00:23:25.540 class person she's landed gentry so i'd say sort of somewhere between middle class and upper class

00:23:32.720 yeah yeah i don't know if that makes sense to a north american audience um but it's the point 0.98

00:23:41.780 you're making out that like class privilege is partly what allows her to get away with this

00:23:45.620 that's what it's leading to um is she able to express herself in this way because she has 1.00

00:23:50.280 some societal advantages in a way that someone lower class than her maybe wouldn't have been 1.00

00:23:56.640 able to like the fact that she's able to do this and get away with it and no one's like

00:24:00.440 she's not being ostracized clearly or is she wow well she okay okay and there's instances where

00:24:09.580 she gets even by partners she gets quite horribly i think it's quite horrible um quite horribly

00:24:16.940 rejected for her presentation and there's a bit again we're back in scarborough it's a different

00:24:23.620 scarborough trip it's later in her life it's in the 1820s she just likes to go to scarborough

00:24:28.140 but i'm just focusing on it she goes back to scarborough with marina now lawton so she's

00:24:36.180 married to charles lawton at this point and she just kind of rejects anne because of her 0.98

00:24:43.140 unfashionable dress and the fact that she's starting to get because I think she's in her

00:24:47.520 sort of like late 20s early 30s at this point she's starting to get um like facial hair a little 1.00

00:24:54.760 bit on her chin and like her whiskers and Mariana just kind of treats her like oh I don't want to

00:25:04.280 be seen with you in public and Anne is really deeply hurt by it so she's becoming more I don't

00:25:12.180 know if it's necessarily masculine presenting but just more like she's wearing black and then

00:25:17.080 eventually it's like now she's wearing boots and now it's like she's got whiskers like she's becoming

00:25:21.700 more I don't know she's standing out more as she gets older somehow is that true I think it

00:25:27.540 fluctuates because I think there's also a point where she starts to firm it up a little bit I'm

00:25:32.680 not I'm no fashion historian but I know that there's a point where she does start to firm

00:25:36.680 it up a little bit more and that's just so that she'll be treated a bit more nicely and also when

00:25:43.140 she's when we get into like the late the late 1820s early 1830s when she's really starting to 0.51

00:25:49.140 try and get in with these different members of the aristocracy they do see her as a bit of an

00:25:55.240 oddity and a bit and a bit unique but there's that sort of fine line between like oh isn't this funny 0.96

00:26:00.780 isn't she isn't she queer isn't she a bit funny but also having to conform to their gender

00:26:06.420 expectations and there and there's only so far that you can go with that before you'll be ostracized 0.94

00:26:11.400 completely so i'm just thinking so we're talking about how she actually can we pivot from we're

00:26:17.740 gonna we're gonna get back into her relationships obviously but the whole like landowner thing so

00:26:22.980 you're saying that she in order to be sort of accepted at in certain echelons she was kind of 0.89

00:26:28.300 like becoming a bit more femme a little bit but at what point does she inherit the property and

00:26:34.340 become a landowner 1826 um so that would make her in her 30s early 30s yeah and it's this the

00:26:42.640 property where the diaries are found shipped in hall yeah shipped in hall yeah it's just outside

00:26:47.200 of halifax in yorkshire yeah so it's quite a substantial banner house parkland and she owns

00:26:52.040 various bits of land along with that which she can exploit for mining purposes right

00:26:57.480 yeah actually okay we're going to talk about the landowning and we're going to talk about the 1.00

00:27:01.620 problematic faveness of how what what does she do with with this property and money and 0.99

00:27:07.960 what how is she getting her income so she inherited tenants from her uncle so there

00:27:13.980 were already people who were renting properties owned by the listers on shibden's land and also

00:27:20.380 sort of around halifax so she takes on on those tenancies when he dies she also yeah just starts

00:27:27.600 getting involved in different enterprises in halifax so she um and this is i think quite a

00:27:33.440 major plot point in the tv show is that she learns that uh her neighbors the rawsons who she knew when

00:27:40.420 she was younger she was quite close with different members the rawsons uh particularly the women at

00:27:45.260 different points in her younger life um not in a not that i remember i don't think there's any

00:27:50.120 intimacies between her and the rawsons except maybe flirtation but at this later point she 0.93

00:27:56.120 learns that the men in the rawson family are exploiting her coal beds and so she's given this 1.00

00:28:03.340 advice to what oh her coal like her mines okay yeah so they're not being mined actively but

00:28:10.740 they're coal beds that i think previously had been mined like a slightly earlier generation

00:28:16.900 of the lister family but not in her lifetime i don't believe but it suggested that she start

00:28:22.780 having people mine her coal so that they can keep it so that she can actually get some money out of

00:28:28.040 it and also so that they're not continuing to be exploited by their neighbours um and so she really

00:28:33.220 goes quite all in on this yeah and that's sort of yeah late 1820s early 1830s that that starts to

00:28:39.740 happen and she's a quite early investor in railway shares as well isn't she because railways are

00:28:43.940 getting going in britain around this time 1825 um you get the first passenger railway and um

00:28:49.260 Yorkshire is one of the first places where they start building up. So yeah, that's another big

00:28:54.380 source of income. If this was like a cis man we were talking about, this would just be like very 0.99

00:28:59.960 par for the course. Expected behavior of somebody who inherited this property and now they're 0.99

00:29:05.400 overseeing the mines, they're getting shares in railways. This is kind of typical behavior for

00:29:10.860 a landowner, would you say? I think so, yeah. Which just becomes exceptional because of who

00:29:16.000 she is and that it's not a cis man doing this. Yeah. I mean, there were other women who were

00:29:21.960 taking on property after family members had died. I think the thing that is seen as exceptional 0.74

00:29:28.600 about Lister is just how much she is involved. And the fact that she's not delegating to other

00:29:35.440 people is the fact that she is very actively getting herself involved in the business of it

00:29:41.100 all um and she's overseeing and she's and not that she's just overseeing it but the fact that

00:29:47.520 she's really invested and she's very interested in her own business as well to me that i can see

00:29:52.600 that that would pair up with her trait that you talked about before of liking to explain things

00:29:57.360 to people and stuff like she she's clearly somebody who thinks a lot of her own abilities

00:30:01.540 so i could see that if she's involved she thinks well i need to have my fingers and everything

00:30:05.360 because i'm the smart one here i'm the one who knows what to do and i don't i don't mean this

00:30:10.340 in a negative way at all I just I'm just trying to form a picture of what she's like as a person

00:30:13.560 and it's like of course like in her personal life and also in this business life she would want to

00:30:17.160 be kind of in charge of things that just seems to be what what she's about yeah absolutely and

00:30:22.060 after she leaves the king's manor she is very invested in continuing her education and she

00:30:29.100 does this um through I know that there's a trend at the moment for people making their own curriculums

00:30:35.580 at home for sort of like the autumn semester if they're out of academia but she has this she

00:30:41.700 creates her own curriculum for herself she has local tutors come and tutor her on a variety of

00:30:46.920 different topics she goes to local she goes to lectures that are held in Halifax and I think

00:30:52.840 when we're thinking about exceptionality there were other women that were doing this there were

00:30:56.420 other women that were attending these lectures and learning about these things and I think

00:31:00.900 a really great example of a peer of listers that in a more general sense that we can think of as

00:31:07.360 having similar traits to her is her friend francis pickford who lived in bath and the bristol area

00:31:12.960 that she identified with but also would often kind of try and distance herself from because of their

00:31:19.260 similarities and particularly because of francis pickford's more overt masculinity oh yeah and the

00:31:26.740 that she also was living with a partner at different points in her life oh interesting

00:31:30.360 so in terms of the so she's getting all this education at what point does she start doing

00:31:35.540 all this kind of world traveling well is this before or after ann walker i guess it's before

00:31:40.520 right just quite a bit yeah way before she goes to paris for the first time with her

00:31:46.180 father and with her sister in the early 1820s they go just the three of them and then she goes over

00:31:53.420 again another two times to paris with her aunt and she lives there for quite a while and that's

00:31:58.660 um we're looking at like uh helena whitbread's editions of lister's journals so she was one of

00:32:03.700 the first she was the first person to publish lister's journals including the lesbian content

00:32:10.660 in her journals and the and the sexual content in her journals um helena whitbread was doing that in

00:32:15.980 the late 1980s her second book uh no priest but love is about lister's life when she's living

00:32:22.580 in Paris that point she's living with her aunt Anne and then at other times she's living separately

00:32:28.100 and sometimes with another woman called Maria Barlow and her daughter and is that another

00:32:32.480 romantic interest Maria Barlow oh yeah because if we think about I don't want to try and frame

00:32:39.460 it too much around Gentleman Jack or or the the tv film but I know that it's a good shortcut for

00:32:44.420 people and a media touchstone um Maria Barlow we only see for like maybe three seconds in one of 0.99

00:32:52.220 the first episodes of the show and it's just performing oral sex on her and her orgasming 0.93

00:32:58.660 and then it cuts away and that's all we ever see of maria barlow so all right i'm assuming that 0.99

00:33:04.920 it's maria barlow because it's meant to be that she's in paris and she's having sex with this

00:33:08.120 woman i'm like it's probably maria barlow so in terms of her i don't know how much this is like

00:33:13.040 i it doesn't seem like there's a clear delineation of this relationship ends and then this one

00:33:18.480 begins there's always sort of an overlap period but we had eliza rain and then who was then she

00:33:24.700 left her for mariana oh i mean if we're it depends if we're including everyone okay okay so there's

00:33:30.820 lots there's there's lots of paramours there's lots of relationships and they're all detailed

00:33:35.120 in this diary and what i don't know if mariana is a good example or who would be a good example

00:33:41.560 of what these relationships were like like if you were in a relationship with analyst or what

00:33:45.020 what are you what are you up to are you just are you going for walks together are you just secretly

00:33:51.020 meeting by night like what what is the relationship i mean i think each of her relationships is quite

00:33:56.860 different um and it's just because they're just very different she's at different points in her

00:34:00.780 life um the i think what we think of as like the core relationships and the ones that she is

00:34:06.260 like actively pursuing them in a romantic ways as well as a sexual way a lot of them were 0.99

00:34:12.360 conducted long distance, like very lesbian stereotype. So, I mean, her first relationship

00:34:18.840 with Eyes of Rain, they start at school and then they're sort of, a lot of their relationship is

00:34:23.120 conducted via correspondence. And then the same happens a little bit with Isabella Norcliffe,

00:34:29.040 but they're seeing each other relatively often and they're corresponding a lot.

00:34:34.320 And Mariana, again, it's kind of, there's a fluctuation between them sort of having these

00:34:39.180 instances where they're meeting up and i think again my research is about lister's travel

00:34:42.660 motivations and her and her mobility around the uk and a lot of that i think is motivated by

00:34:47.280 um she does a lot of her travel to go and see the women that she's interested in

00:34:50.920 and she's motivated to go to those places so that she gets the chance to meet up with them 0.58

00:34:55.580 even if i mean there are so many instances of mariana's traveling somewhere else and ann will

00:35:00.960 meet her at a stop in the middle and they'll have a little tryst and then mariana will carry on to 0.96

00:35:05.420 go do something with her husband oh so sorry mariana has a husband oh yeah yeah yeah so she

00:35:11.220 marries in 1816 march 1816 and i think it's pertinent that so lister's journal for the most

00:35:19.540 part is very very consistent um so from 1806 we have the loose leaf journals i call them the

00:35:27.980 pre-journals i know that other lister scholars call them the her juvenilia which i think is

00:35:32.940 pretty accurate. They go from 1806 to 1814. We then have a big old gap between 1814 and August

00:35:40.740 1816. And then from there on, we get most of her life until that last missing months

00:35:47.920 when she's in Katesi at the end. And there is a fair amount of evidence. I know Jill Liddington

00:35:53.080 has written about this, that basically Lister probably, there's a high chance that Lister

00:35:57.040 burnt or destroyed that bit of the journal when she's in her most committed part of her relationship

00:36:03.840 with mariana so a lot of their relate when they're actually sort of together before mariana is married

00:36:09.240 we don't have we just have the remaining correspondence we don't actually have the

00:36:13.480 journal entries for that period do we know i'm just i'm just a nosy gossip what does her husband

00:36:21.280 think of all of this does he know about all of this um he definitely does because he finds a

00:36:27.840 letter from anne basically saying like she's saying to mariana like just wait till charles

00:36:33.140 dies and then we'll be together like i'm paraphrasing there but she's basically saying

00:36:38.700 let's just wait till charles dies and then we'll be happy and he sees that letter and it impacts

00:36:43.480 the way that i think there's a period where anne's letters don't get through to mariana or

00:36:48.420 marina's letters don't get back to anne so there's a bit where they're not corresponding very much

00:36:52.600 and that's because of the husband's sort of repression of that of that communication

00:36:57.920 um there are again and i think this is something that i'll always say about lister is that she's

00:37:02.500 very contradictory over the course of her life and it is i think it is such a gift that we have

00:37:06.680 so much of her life recorded so you can you can see where she changes her mind where her ideas

00:37:12.360 evolve so she's not i don't think we can really talk about lister in a super consistent way or

00:37:17.100 say she was x or she was this because she changes so much and i forgot the point that i was gonna

00:37:23.540 make i'm really sorry well no i just had another question and maybe this is for kit um just in

00:37:28.100 terms of so if the husband finding this letter and i mean i guess if anyone saw a letter being

00:37:33.260 like once your husband is dead we'll be together you'd be like oh okay like what's happening but

00:37:38.460 in terms of like an understanding of lesbian relationships in the early 1800s because i know

00:37:44.640 there's like sodomy laws and stuff but that's very much based on men right like there's not

00:37:50.600 is this the time period where there's not really a lot against being a lesbian because people are 0.53

00:37:55.380 like well if there's no penis and it's not sex so who cares is that this era kind of yeah and

00:38:00.840 I mean the laws are but yeah partly about what counts as sex um but partly also I suppose about 0.65

00:38:07.500 what are the consequences of um relationships you know the buggery law has always um in england

00:38:15.940 and i think everywhere partly been about the social consequences that can result from two men having

00:38:21.300 an intimate relationship um because if someone has you know how men men are people who can have

00:38:27.020 political power and therefore if someone can inveigle their way into their intimacy sexually

00:38:32.180 that influences the way they dispense that political power whereas women the assumption is 1.00

00:38:36.300 they don't have political or financial influence. Therefore, it's of less consequence what they're 1.00

00:38:40.380 getting up to sexually or romantically. Anne Lister is obviously an outlier in having some 1.00

00:38:47.000 economic and political power, but I don't think that's really Charles Lawton's objection that

00:38:50.580 that's going to affect the way that she deploys that. There is enough erotica out at this time 0.99

00:38:58.600 that means that people can have a pretty good idea of what women can do sexually. It's very 0.85

00:39:04.020 skewed towards penetrative sex still but i think um the idea that two women could have a sexually

00:39:10.040 satisfying relationship it's something that would have been available to charles and therefore

00:39:14.240 is making him angry when he realizes um that that is what his wife is getting from anne um

00:39:22.340 i think that's fair to say yeah i think it's very much a issue of cuckoldry really he feels like

00:39:29.800 he's being made a cuckold of despite the fact that he himself was also having extramarital affairs

00:39:35.160 oh of course naturally and siring chill and like having children um with other women other i think 0.97

00:39:41.320 he has a son with a servant something like that but obviously he's held to a different standard

00:39:46.200 than mariana is the lister is this just like on the same topic it's just um i my previous season

00:39:54.920 of this podcast, we were talking about Marie Antoinette and there was so much, various people,

00:39:59.940 lots of pamphlets, you know, demonizing her in various ways. And one of them was saying like,

00:40:03.800 she's, she's a lesbian and that is dangerous and unnatural and German. So the, at that period of

00:40:12.760 time, and there's these like very detailed erotic pamphlets talking about how Marie Antoinette is

00:40:17.320 having these relationships with her female favorites. And so lesbianism was understood as

00:40:21.260 being a threat to kind of society was that the case in england at this time as well or do you 0.98

00:40:29.060 know in that it is a disruption to patriarchal social reproduction um yeah absolutely um if the

00:40:36.100 women are um having sex for fun rather than for babies um if the women are um being distracted

00:40:43.200 from their what is considered to be their natural place in society then yes absolutely um yeah i 0.52

00:40:49.560 I don't know if, Sarah, you have some more specific stuff to say about Lister.

00:40:52.440 I was going to say she references Marie Antoinette quite specifically.

00:40:58.020 So, again, returning to the idea of terminology, like what language do we use to describe Lister?

00:41:03.480 Can we call her a lesbian? 0.98

00:41:05.740 So she did have the word sapphic or sapphist.

00:41:09.700 And she, I don't remember what year it is, but there's an instance where Maria Barlow is asking her about it.

00:41:15.980 this is when they're living in paris and she said and so they have this conversation about

00:41:20.640 about sapphic love or desire and lister says oh no i'm not sapphic and she says that it's because

00:41:28.540 she associates it with artifice and with specifically with penetration and and the 0.97

00:41:37.060 kind of this idea of like lesbian sex for the pleasure of men so she talks about it in sort of 0.94

00:41:41.820 that framing um but yeah so she she rejects the term sapphic because of this connotation with

00:41:48.320 marie entoinette i mean you you brought it up so i'm just gonna follow what you just said

00:41:53.340 because ann lister's diaries are very specific can you talk about what what sex acts she was

00:41:59.480 getting up to because there was not penetration right or there was not toys or you tell me

00:42:06.620 you've done so much more research yeah i don't think that there's this is me working my brain

00:42:11.940 now i don't think there's ever yeah i don't think she uses toys but she does have very specific

00:42:15.560 language and different terminology that she uses to describe different sex acts so she says um i

00:42:22.140 think the most common one is having a kiss and she's not talking about a kiss on the mouth um i

00:42:27.420 think having a kiss is um rubbing on the sort of externally on the vulva and sort of um and

00:42:38.000 causing frictions like frottage on the surface of the on the surface on the outside of the vulva

00:42:43.340 and then she also describes grubbling which is then kind of going a bit deeper um and then she

00:42:50.000 also i mean i mean we can come to the blanket at some point from earlier um at this point there's

00:42:55.700 a bit where she describes um fingering a partner and feeling the the stones of i think it's the

00:43:02.160 stones of arania or anania or something but she's also putting her fingers up into her partner and

00:43:07.520 penetrating them that way you mentioned the blanket and before we were recording um sarah

00:43:12.600 was showing us you've actually you know what we have this video show like you have you have three

00:43:17.000 ann lister based objects in your vicinity yeah so can you can you show the blanket will be the

00:43:23.660 finale but so you've got a mug you've got a shirt yeah just yeah so to start with um the jumper that

00:43:29.000 i'm wearing says um a little bit of chaos and that's in analyst's handwriting um i also have

00:43:35.540 and this is in her cryptan so it's completely illegible um it starts here and it says and this

00:43:42.920 is a direct quote from lister uh it says i am the best doctor and i was given this after i finished

00:43:48.980 my PhD um but then also um before my partner and I got together when we were flirting with each

00:43:56.480 other she was very kind and um made me this delightful blanket and on it it's all encrypt

00:44:02.520 hand and it's all um a page from this journal where she's um being intimate and grubbling and

00:44:10.600 putting her fingers inside um a Miss Mary Valance and so yeah it's just a whole

00:44:15.900 it's a whole fleece blanket just with smart from this journal on the page

00:44:22.400 it's it's delightful this is the best meet cute i've ever heard by the way floating with someone

00:44:29.960 yeah unless it's smart it's beautiful and also a good example for the listeners to show this is how

00:44:37.600 this is what the crypt hand looks like this is what people are deciphering like to me it's just

00:44:42.800 i i would have no idea like yeah it just looks like random symbols but to people who once you

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00:47:57.060 So she's having these sexual relationships. 1.00

00:47:59.780 She's being a landowner. 1.00

00:48:01.960 She's got these coal mines.

00:48:04.360 I don't know if this, again, you both know this story much better than I do, but if this

00:48:07.700 could lead to her ideas about marriage, because to be sort of like a landowning man, usually

00:48:15.620 if you're a cis man um you would marry some heiress or something right like to get to combine

00:48:22.620 your fortunes to get a bit more money um what were her thoughts about what were her thoughts 0.75

00:48:27.460 about marriage like at this point legally if she was going to get married it would have to be to a

00:48:31.240 man and i don't sense that was ever an option that she considered yeah i don't think it managed

00:48:36.740 marriage to a man was ever on the cards um i think this is where another place where

00:48:41.720 annalister as problematic favorably comes to the fore um she considered a kind of religious

00:48:49.080 quasi-marriage ceremony with mariana to my knowledge um they're considered going to um

00:48:54.220 church and kind of sharing holy communion together as a marriage ceremony and then that was something

00:48:59.120 she actually did with ann walker and there are romantic and financial motivations for this i

00:49:07.280 think it's probably fair to say um it is something that's really important to her you know she writes

00:49:12.760 in her diary um that the first time she ever held on walker she hoped that they would be together

00:49:18.500 forever i'm paraphrasing um so you know that is there are romantic motivations um but it is

00:49:24.460 undeniable that ann walker also had a lot of money um and i don't know whether sarah you want to

00:49:29.440 contextualize or talk a bit more about that i mean coming back to like mariana for a second so they

00:49:34.520 did they did exchange rings and there are multiple partners that Lister has who describe her as their

00:49:40.860 husband um Eliza right at the start describes Lister as her husband Mariana describes her as

00:49:48.180 her husband and I think Anne does at some point in the I think she says it to Lister and then she

00:49:54.080 writes it in the journal I don't think she never describes Lister as her husband in her journal

00:49:59.140 personally but there is that sentiment between them yeah she took i mean she took those

00:50:05.840 relationships quite seriously but as we said there's also consistently she's also having

00:50:11.360 relationships with other women whilst she's in these relationships and i think that was because

00:50:16.240 she didn't she wasn't constrained by religious or legal marriage she was able to sort of look

00:50:23.360 outside of the relationship because she wasn't constrained in the same way although i will say

00:50:27.940 like with the example of marianna's husband men weren't either like so in that way it was

00:50:33.220 you have your primary relationship and then you have your other mistresses and so

00:50:38.100 maybe just emulating what how men would yeah yes absolutely she really is emulating that

00:50:43.900 differentiation between wives and mistresses and um maria barlow definitely describes herself

00:50:51.680 as being like a mistress to lister um and that being their relationship because she's aware of 0.84

00:50:57.680 mariana and they're and i don't know whether she's fully aware of the extent of their relationship

00:51:02.140 but she feels like a mistress and i think the same again i could be wrong here but i think the

00:51:07.940 same is the same as equivalent with um mary valance as well in the 1820s the relationship

00:51:14.260 with ann walker is probably the bit of her journals that i know the least um so my engagement

00:51:18.580 is more like early journals 1820s i will say like from what i've and i've read quite a lot of the

00:51:26.220 different texts that go over that part of her life like the late 1820s and 1830s and her

00:51:31.300 relationship with Ann Walker there is still a lot of love there and I think it's I think there have

00:51:36.600 been some texts that have come out some some literature that's come out that kind of de-emphasizes

00:51:41.720 the love and affection between them and the fact that there was I know that I know that some people

00:51:46.740 have said like oh it wasn't the same kind of love as what she had with Mariana and I know that you

00:51:51.260 asked at the beginning about um my work with fandom and the lister fan community and enthusiast

00:51:56.800 community i think that's something that doesn't just come through with the enthusiast community

00:52:01.400 but does also come through with lister researchers is that we all have our favorite like partner of

00:52:08.600 listers as the way that we understand our relationship with her i think can be a little

00:52:14.060 bit i don't think bias is the right word but i think it can be our position and our interpretation

00:52:19.520 of those relationships might change if there's a different relationship that we are prioritizing

00:52:25.420 our research well and so ann walker is the person and this is where i really want to talk get kit's

00:52:30.940 point of view on this because there is this some sort of church ceremony that has been commemorated

00:52:35.840 with a plaque can you explain yeah your work with that but also what you're you're understanding what

00:52:42.380 this church ceremony was yeah it's i think in context of the meaning that it had to anne and

00:52:51.820 anne and um the romantic nature of their relationship i think it's fair to call it a

00:52:56.920 marriage in context um they exchange rings and they stay behind after the um church service to

00:53:03.380 share holy communion together which is what they would have done if they were like having a church

00:53:06.940 wedding and it's clear it's contextualized in analyst's diaries as something that is about

00:53:14.440 them being together forever um it's not monogamy as sarah said um but it is romantic and i think

00:53:20.320 yeah it's a great point you make sarah that um there's a there's a very kind of ideologically

00:53:28.280 romantic narrative that says like oh you know analyst's first love was her greatest love and

00:53:32.860 So like she couldn't have Marianna, so Anne Walker was a consolation prize.

00:53:36.040 And I don't think on the basis of what we know about their relationship, that that's a fair spin to put on it.

00:53:43.300 It makes a good TV narrative, maybe, but it doesn't it doesn't reflect like the messiness of people's lives.

00:53:48.940 Like people can fall in love with more than one person. And I think it's really clear that I'm listening to it.

00:53:52.840 and so the the plaque the the drama of the the plaque and also the meaning of the plaque to

00:54:00.840 people what what what does that i just remember from your book kit you talked about you were

00:54:05.580 involved in the wording of it or something like that yeah okay let's give it a bit of context on

00:54:10.200 this um so the background is that this the um church where anne and anne had their what um

00:54:17.600 you could call a marriage um is in is holy trinity goodroom gate in york it's this lovely little

00:54:22.000 tucked away church um off um one of york's lovely little narrow streets in the minster quarter

00:54:26.600 and um i when i lived in york um i was involved in the charity york lgbt history months um and

00:54:33.140 with a friend and academic helen gray and we started a diy rainbow plaques project where

00:54:38.460 people would make cardboard plaques to commemorate like places that they thought were significant

00:54:42.120 to queer history in york and one of the places that came up we've run this over several years

00:54:48.020 and one of the places that came up year after year was people really wanted to commemorate this

00:54:52.000 place where Anne and Anne had had what could be counted as York's first lesbian marriage.

00:54:59.040 And that meant that when the possibility was raised of having a permanent rainbow plaque

00:55:06.380 in York, that was the place that people were really, really keen to focus on.

00:55:10.420 Now, the process by which we worked on this plaque, there were various organizations involved.

00:55:17.340 Helen Graham, as an academic with an interest in heritage, was involved going independently.

00:55:20.660 i was involved from york lgbt history month there was also the church's conservation trust who owns

00:55:25.600 holy trinity and there was york lgbt forum which is a kind of big um peer support and advocacy um

00:55:31.020 queer group in the city and so we all worked together and we all had kind of our own little

00:55:37.160 agendas for how we wanted to do it um you know for the church's conservation trust they wanted

00:55:42.280 to bring tourism in for the york civic trust who were um organizing the plaque um you know had

00:55:48.940 slightly different priorities. The LGBT forum had different priorities again. But what none of us

00:55:53.840 really had was a great link to specifically lesbian organizations in the city, or I think

00:56:00.480 a sense of the national and international significance of the plaque that we were

00:56:03.940 trying to put up. So we held consultations and we held consultation events and online surveys,

00:56:08.740 but we didn't really reach all of the right people. And in part, that was because of the

00:56:13.600 specific context in york where actually most of the queer organizations that um were involved in

00:56:19.200 the plaque committee were trans-led and most of the lesbian organizations even though their members

00:56:23.800 weren't necessarily transphobic they were like transphobic lesbian led so like we weren't getting

00:56:29.160 our message through because of the specific people involved um and there was also one of the

00:56:33.980 organizations who was keen to do it on like a specific deadline that i think you know wasn't

00:56:38.820 the right decision in the end we like it meant that the process refreshed and um so we ended up

00:56:44.020 getting the impression from the consultation we did that what was most important to people

00:56:47.760 was pointing out analysts gender non-conformity and pointing out that it was a marriage although

00:56:53.400 the church was then like you can't say marriage so we ended up with this unwieldy phrase celebrated

00:56:57.680 marital commitment without legal recognition um and um and people were really keen on like

00:57:05.000 Anlister as a kind of women in business icon, like Anlister Girlboss. So we ended up with this

00:57:09.780 mishmash of all those things. And we unveiled the plaque at really, I think, the very beginning

00:57:17.200 of the kind of trans culture wars that we have today. This was 2017, I think. So yeah, it was 0.69

00:57:25.600 really, it was a surprise to all of us, I think, that our description of Anlister's behavior as

00:57:32.020 gender non-conforming was taken as claiming Ann Lister for the trans side and not the lesbian side

00:57:36.600 I think it was naive of us to not see that coming um and I think it was naive of us to not

00:57:41.460 see Ann Lister as a lesbian figure from lesbian history was really important to lesbians

00:57:46.500 but I also think that the yeah the way that the plaque was read and spun was a product of

00:57:53.200 that the very beginnings of that transphobic culture in the UK um and what if this was

00:58:01.440 happening to me now i would i think be able to try and negotiate the what happened afterwards

00:58:08.420 in a way that meant that the plaque we ended up with if that the reworded plaque we ended up with

00:58:15.860 spoke to and lesbian history and trans history but the position i was in i it was the first time

00:58:23.740 i'd really had like a substantial amount of transphobic online hate and i was completely

00:58:29.380 so completely blindsided by that that I wasn't really able to take like an active part in the

00:58:34.260 discussions for the reworded plaque that happened afterwards. And, you know, despite a few people

00:58:42.520 trying to get me to, I really wasn't in a place where I could do that. And so the plaque we have

00:58:47.420 now calls Anna Lesbian, which is also a term I didn't use, doesn't say anything about gender

00:58:54.400 nonconformity um and did rephrase this stuff about marriage in a way that i think works better

00:58:59.980 it's announced it took sacrament to seal her union and goes with diarist instead of entrepreneur

00:59:05.260 girlboss um and there are pros and cons to all of those decisions but i do think that the um

00:59:11.140 replacement of gender nonconforming with lesbian is still not something that reflects

00:59:16.740 um's totality perfectly instead what we have is a plaque that sort of continues to reflect the

00:59:23.880 wrangling over Anne's legacy and the desire for different groups to see themselves in her

00:59:33.860 and rather than a plaque that reflects Anne fully I would say it's it's such a complex thing to try

00:59:40.900 and take somebody's totality into a plaque that I'm sure has a certain letter count or a word count

00:59:48.540 and how you also yeah so in terms of the the plaque itself like it is you described as the

00:59:54.740 rainbow plaque so it's similar to the blue plaques that are all over the uk right that just like this

00:59:59.360 person lived in this house this person whatever so it's it's like that but it's got the rainbow

01:00:02.960 so it's it'll make it easy for people to find the church who want to make a pilgrimage i guess

01:00:07.120 they'll notice it yeah well it's you have to still have to go through the gateway to see it so it's

01:00:12.080 it was the UK's first rainbow plaque, which is now, you know, a thing that there are more of

01:00:22.020 across the UK. So that remains something I'm proud of. You know, it's a blue plaque,

01:00:26.340 but it's visibly queer history. You can't ignore the fact that a queer person was here and is 0.99

01:00:30.960 being given the same validation as other kinds of heritage. And I do think that's really important.

01:00:36.620 And from your work, Sarah, what have you found about the importance of people visiting this site

01:00:41.760 in terms of ann lister fans and tourism and things i would imagine this is like site number one if

01:00:47.400 someone's doing ann lister pilgrimage yeah it's like either site number one or site number two

01:00:51.900 after shibden hall um i mean this was like the topic of my phd thesis was it was partly where

01:00:59.960 is ann going like what's ann interested in and then the other part was what are lister enthusiasts

01:01:05.300 interested in like where are they going what locations are important to them like in relation

01:01:10.320 to Anne but also where else are they going because of Anne but yeah like this is probably I would say

01:01:17.380 the majority of people that I spoke to because I did 40 interviews as part of my work pretty much

01:01:22.500 everyone had been like I think everyone had been to Shivden Hall at least once and I think probably

01:01:29.060 about 75 to 80 percent had been to um Holy Trinity as well so that was a really really key point and

01:01:36.740 it was the first i think it was yeah they're just so both of them are just such important places

01:01:42.220 because it is i don't know if we think about it in terms of sort of uh in a more sort of

01:01:47.760 homonormative continuum we sort of have shibden hall is the place that she lived

01:01:52.540 um halifax minster in halifax where she was christened and where somewhere in halifax minster

01:02:00.540 she's buried but then we also have the place where she um took vows and was married which is

01:02:06.320 holy trinity church so those are sort of three really really key places and then i was interested

01:02:11.560 in like okay well where else are people interested in going why are they going there what about those

01:02:16.660 other locations are they being drawn to those places because of lister can we talk well i mean

01:02:21.620 in terms of other places when she and ann walker were married they traveled together to various

01:02:26.040 places both i would i don't know i keep saying things i'm like well you tell me but i i know

01:02:32.560 for sure that like they ended she died in georgia so they're obviously in like continental europe

01:02:36.980 but what other places did you come across in your research that people like to visit were those

01:02:41.360 places that ann and ann traveled to i mean in my work i was mostly i mean i'd love to do another

01:02:46.640 project looking at people's uh travels on mainland europe um i was mostly looking at their travels

01:02:54.680 within britain because a lot of enthusiasts who were traveling to go to listed locations some of

01:03:00.300 them were brits themselves um but a lot were coming from around the globe um so they would

01:03:06.140 generally as their first port of call they would go to england first and they would go to shibden

01:03:10.460 they would go to holy trinity they would go to halifax minster but in terms of uh her continental

01:03:16.040 travel that oh my gosh like pretty much like almost everywhere not everywhere but a lot of

01:03:21.880 different nations um she went all over scandinavia um she went to poland she went to france multiple

01:03:28.920 times it's more i think really with lister it's more of a case of where didn't she go

01:03:32.860 rather than where she did go because even if she isn't spending much time there she's traveling

01:03:38.040 through a lot of different countries and obviously how we understand those countries now like some of

01:03:42.960 them have changed their names some of them their borders have changed since the 1820s 1830s but

01:03:48.680 yeah she was a prolific traveler and both by herself with other people well this is the thing

01:03:54.480 she never really traveled by herself because she always had her servants with her uh so there's

01:03:59.180 never forget never forget she is she's a wealthy person yeah exactly um but yeah she's traveling

01:04:06.480 all over yeah and she's i mean she's not breaking records but she's sort of being the first like

01:04:11.800 she's being the first to do things um i can't remember which mountain mountain is she's just

01:04:16.660 like mountain climbing and stuff yeah like yeah she wasn't just traveling around to well like you

01:04:22.480 mentioned kit like with the boots like she's she's walking she's like her travels are very active

01:04:27.440 trips seemingly yeah when you're talking about breaking records too like part of this would be

01:04:31.980 like given her gender non-conformity and how would she define herself but like a lot of these things

01:04:36.460 are like the first english woman to whatever i would imagine these are the sorts of records

01:04:41.120 she's breaking or creating i guess yeah absolutely i was just trying to find out which mountain it

01:04:47.220 is it's, I think it's Vinyamal that she is the first person to ascend Vinyamal.

01:04:54.340 And there was a European prince who tried to lie to official record keepers and say that he got there first.

01:05:03.980 And actually she'd gotten there, I think it was like a day before.

01:05:06.960 And she made the point, she was like, no, I was the first person to do this.

01:05:11.140 Just because you're a prince doesn't mean that you get to mosey in there and say that you got there first.

01:05:16.360 and she makes a real point of going and saying actually no this is me this is my guide he and

01:05:22.140 i went up there and we got there first so not even the first i that was just being naive like

01:05:28.260 assuming she's the first woman no she's the first person to do some of these things yeah so

01:05:33.320 so she and ann walker they're together do you know of course you know how long were they

01:05:38.740 together like from their commitments or until ann lister died like it's like that relationship

01:05:44.540 stuck right like they yeah they never separated 1834 they get married I mean they're together

01:05:51.000 before that but um yeah then 1840 and dies so I think they start their relationship late 1832

01:05:58.600 and then there's bits where each of them goes off for a bit and they'll go traveling without the

01:06:05.020 other and then they come together and then they have their and then they commit to each other in

01:06:09.340 1834 but they they don't celebrate their anniversary on the on the day that they took

01:06:16.020 the sacrament together they celebrate their anniversary on a different day um yeah it's a

01:06:20.440 kind of cake that they have that they make on that specific day but it's yeah it's not it's

01:06:26.280 not the day that they take the sacrament together it's a different day and so one of the like i just

01:06:31.680 did some preparations for this conversation and one of the descriptions i read of i forget who

01:06:35.780 said it a van lister they're like so she died she's 49 like i couldn't imagine what she didn't

01:06:40.200 accomplish in her life that she wanted to like she the 49 years were full of just like so much

01:06:45.460 travel like you were saying like the self-guided education and stuff like she in terms of like a

01:06:50.420 life fulfilled like it seems like she kind of did everything she wanted to i think she wanted i think

01:06:56.220 she did want to publish some of the writing she really she definitely did and i think specifically

01:07:01.980 she wanted to publish her travel writing and she had like she thought of using different pseudonyms 0.75

01:07:09.680 because this is still a point where some women are starting to publish under their own names but

01:07:15.540 there's a lot who still aren't and I think she was quite mindful about that and what the impact

01:07:22.680 might be of her doing that would be if she's if she's publishing that during her lifetime

01:07:28.860 but yeah so she was she was practicing writing up her travels she was writing separately from

01:07:34.760 her main journal um in travel notes in specific travel journals and what she notes down there is

01:07:41.360 obviously there's crossover between what she includes in the journal but it is distinct and

01:07:46.220 it is written in a specific voice and a specific style and you can see that she's really starting

01:07:51.680 to think about how she might do that well and that's the i've come across this so many other

01:07:55.540 times in my recent research for this podcast just a wealthy person travels and then after they come

01:08:00.300 back they're like my trip to italy like this is i can understand the sort of writing that this

01:08:04.940 would have been this is this is the thing that people would just kind of do i think the interesting

01:08:08.240 thing is that like some of her earliest travel writing is very much um itinerary writing so she

01:08:13.620 is being very like really specifically descriptive of if you go down this road you will see on your

01:08:19.540 right you will see on your left and she's uber uber specific i mean it's it's so real sort of

01:08:24.280 like lonely planet travel guide sort of thing yeah yeah absolutely and i mean she's really

01:08:30.380 utilizing the skills that she's built from being such a regular journal writer is that she is able

01:08:36.120 to just be so meticulous and she writes in um like little notebooks in pencil while she's while

01:08:42.140 she's traveling so she can still make these observations but then she goes and writes up

01:08:45.500 at the end of the day um in a more in a more formal way well that's interesting you say that

01:08:49.700 that was i i'm not surprised to hear that that was one of her goals given how much i think anyone

01:08:54.100 who writes this many diaries and journals, obviously, I think wants to publish at some

01:08:57.620 point. But I mean, who could have imagined that her diaries would be published and would become

01:09:02.960 like she's now, I think when I was researching my book about the Regency era, I was just like,

01:09:08.920 I bet Ann Lister, she wrote about everything. Like she's just such a key diarist of this whole

01:09:14.240 time period. If you want to know what was the word on the street, what did people know about

01:09:17.600 whatever topic. Cause she lived through so many, um, major historical events, like in England in

01:09:24.400 the early 1800s, there's so much up, there's riots, there's so much that's going on. So just

01:09:29.320 to get sort of what was not that she's an average person, but in the context of a diary, just like

01:09:34.660 a person, what was she thinking? And that brings us to, I think I'm going to call this part of my

01:09:40.220 podcast, Caroline's corner, where we talk about how does this person over intersect with Carolina

01:09:45.360 Brunswick who the topic of my book Rebel of the Regency and I was really excited actually and a

01:09:50.300 little disappointed personally that I hadn't met you before Sarah before I finished my final draft

01:09:54.520 of the book because I did find a couple quotes from it no no but I'm excited I found a couple

01:09:59.240 quotes from Ann Lister about Carolina Brunswick when I was researching because I was like Ann

01:10:04.120 Lister must have written something she was documenting everything and I found a couple

01:10:07.240 quotes that was mostly to me I came across as Ann Lister just being like I can't like people who

01:10:12.700 obsessed with love island or something and lister just writing like everyone's talking about this

01:10:17.300 including me i wish i wasn't but oh this is she's like i can't stop reading this this is such

01:10:21.720 exciting trashy news like about carolina brunswick and her adultery trial and stuff

01:10:26.880 so i included those in my book because i really wanted to but i think you found

01:10:30.580 some other mentions of carolina brunswick yeah absolutely um one that i found is again coming

01:10:36.900 back to miss balance and her and lister being intimate with each other is she actually makes

01:10:41.880 a comparison between her and miss valance's relationship and uh carolina brunswick and i'm

01:10:49.140 assuming it's her lover begami bartomaleo bartomaleo begami her hot italian lover yeah 0.88

01:10:55.780 yeah so she makes in her journal she describes the the sex that she's having with miss valance 0.67

01:11:02.240 to the intimacies between caroline and begami and that's that's her opinion from what she's

01:11:08.960 no no that's amazing progami was yeah he was sort of he never came to england because he couldn't

01:11:17.160 but he he was kind of a sex symbol of the time he was like an intensely handsome italian man

01:11:23.440 one person described it was having a mustache as wide as from here to paris or something like that

01:11:28.380 he's got this like mustache but he's super handsome he's like six foot five or something

01:11:33.960 and everybody in england is just like yes caroline get it like look at this guy you've got so

01:11:38.840 he was he was like a famous hot guy so so interesting thinking about like i'm like

01:11:45.300 because i was thinking like who is she framing herself as in this situation

01:11:48.960 begame clearly begame the hottest man the hottest man in the world she's just being i'm basically

01:11:56.040 pedro pascal in this situation is what she said i didn't even have the content to this i was just

01:12:03.240 no this is great get it Anne yeah no at this time no it's fantastic in this time of um in England

01:12:13.240 like there was Caroline frenzy was everywhere like people were obsessed with her trial and her

01:12:17.520 adultery alleged adultery I should say like Madame Tussauds was in England at this time and

01:12:22.980 like demand was so high she made a wax figure of Pergami because people were so interested in this

01:12:27.560 like hunk like they just wanted to to be able to see what he looked like in person yeah

01:12:32.900 i don't need to see if she ever went and saw like whether she ever saw that or whether she ever

01:12:37.880 actually saw what pergami looked like i think everybody knew what everybody knew what pergami

01:12:43.220 looked like there's drawings in the newspapers and everything he was yeah famous i so i love that

01:12:50.220 i love that just in terms of like how does she see herself like in this situation she's not the

01:12:54.440 caroline she's the pergami yeah i love that for her yeah no that's fabulous and i love

01:13:01.940 you know, if I get, if my book comes out in a paperback, maybe I can have like a addendum.

01:13:07.940 Yeah. Yes. At night. Important analyst information, but in terms of analyst and, um, for both of you,

01:13:16.460 I think like what, how do you see her, like both of you personally, but also what have you witnessed

01:13:21.000 in terms of her importance just to queer history, like as an icon, she's, especially there was a TV

01:13:26.600 show, Gentleman Jack, which I think made her story even better known, but I guess I'll ask you each

01:13:30.800 individually like what is your understanding of her as a queer icon in 2025 i mean it is i've

01:13:38.700 spoken to so many people about why she's important to them and it is on it's on different layers on

01:13:44.420 so many different levels there was a the bbc made a sort of companion documentary to gentleman jack

01:13:50.380 that was called gentleman jack changed my life um which was yeah sort of following all these

01:13:55.600 different um women and their interactions with lister's history and the story that's portrayed

01:14:01.180 in the tv show um some of them realizing that they're queer in different ways uh coming like

01:14:08.640 having the courage to come out to family just all the yeah all these different myriad ways

01:14:13.160 that that they feel that she's impacted their life and that was made in like 2022 2023

01:14:18.800 i think she's an interesting one because because i think that there is such a complexity around the

01:14:25.340 way that we talk about and list from the fact that there there are parts of her history that

01:14:29.180 are of her story that are very problematic but i also think that it's quite it's quite easy to

01:14:35.740 write her off as the bad guy i think it's quite easy to write her off as the bad guy and i think

01:14:39.720 as i said earlier like she is complex she is contradictory there are things that she says at

01:14:44.380 one point in her life that she then disregards at another point in her life um i think one of

01:14:49.720 the things that is most commonly described about her is that she was tory and that she voted well

01:14:54.540 Obviously, she didn't vote Tory because she couldn't vote Tory. 0.69

01:14:57.780 Because she's a woman, technically. 1.00

01:14:59.480 Yeah, but she did essentially blackmail her tenants into voting Tory for her. 1.00

01:15:04.060 So she kind of had more voting power than the average person. 0.60

01:15:08.940 But her politics, I mean, we know from work by Susan Lancer, queer historian, 0.76

01:15:14.420 that her politics changed over the course of her life.

01:15:17.380 And the way that, I mean, I was looking at this earlier today,

01:15:20.180 the journal entry that we have where I think it's one of her most famous lines,

01:15:24.000 which is I love and only love the fairer sex and thus beloved by them earlier in that journal

01:15:28.440 entry she describes how the way that she communicates with other people has changed

01:15:34.280 over the last 10 years and the fact that she doesn't feel that she can be as open or as romantic

01:15:40.140 um in her letter writing or the way that she's talking to people um from from when she was 10

01:15:46.160 years younger and so I think with Lister she does have such a big impact but she is also only one

01:15:53.500 person and i think the real significance of her journals is we do learn so much about her and we

01:16:00.840 learn so much about the world that she was inhabiting and we can and we can contextualize

01:16:06.240 the world that she was living in a little bit better but we can also use her as a springboard

01:16:10.540 for all the other people around her and we can learn about the people that that she was meeting

01:16:15.560 and their histories as well and actually um this is something that i'm very interested in is the

01:16:20.580 fact that she is singular in so many ways but in her queerness she's not because she's having in

01:16:28.540 like she's being intimate with all these other women it's not just her like and they're like

01:16:32.580 she's she's being intimate with all of them she's not the only one yeah there is there is not just

01:16:37.900 doing it to them right exactly it's not just something that she's kind of forcing on them

01:16:43.720 it's she is part of a even if we think of community in a different way now there is a

01:16:50.520 community of people because we can see that through her journals and I think that's one of

01:16:54.660 the really significant things about her is how we can see this sort of spider web and I know that

01:17:00.120 um there have been a couple of researchers who've made like the um like the lesbian charts

01:17:04.060 of relationships between Alistair and different women um but I think things like that are like

01:17:09.440 it's funny but it is also really important because it's like yeah there are all these other women that

01:17:13.140 she was being intimate with and do have this shared experience with her just perhaps in

01:17:18.080 slightly different ways yeah i completely agree and i think you know going right back to the

01:17:23.140 start when we were talking about ann lister as quote-unquote the first modern lesbian why are

01:17:27.200 these other women also not the first modern lesbians exactly um and is it something about 0.61

01:17:33.520 ann lister's butchness or you know kind of hyper visibility in the way that um she refuses to

01:17:40.420 conform to femininity um that makes people more able to kind of single her out in a way that i

01:17:48.440 think isn't very helpful for thinking about queer history which is so hyper individualized anyway

01:17:53.540 yeah i think the other thing i would say about um and this is importance to queer history now is

01:17:59.540 that i think if anything where the popularity of gentleman jack could have given us a

01:18:10.120 kind of nuanced and ambivalent portrayal of Anne Lister's relationship to the histories of

01:18:15.860 sexuality and gender all it did was cement Anne Lister as lesbian history on its own

01:18:21.380 and that is something that is both really important to queer women and really frustrating

01:18:29.040 to trans people who also relate to Anne's history. In private trans Facebook groups you sometimes see

01:18:35.860 people talking about you know maybe Anne Lister was actually a trans man and I don't think that's

01:18:39.780 right you know mr wasn't a trans man and this didn't say she was a trans man but like that's

01:18:44.180 the only spaces in which people can voice that view without getting a load of online hate as like

01:18:49.000 social media spaces um and there's something about the romanticization of ann lister and

01:18:56.960 walker which is a real double-edged sword in prioritizing ann lister as a figure in the

01:19:02.480 history of sexuality and not the history of gender when actually in the 18th and 19th century those

01:19:07.020 the same thing um yeah yeah that's kind of where i think anne's place in queer history is at right

01:19:14.260 now entrenching that division between sexuality and gender which is really a historical when we're

01:19:18.980 looking at her period just so listeners know next week's topic is going to be we're talking about 0.99

01:19:23.020 the ladies of hlenn gochlin um who were actually in a maybe in a similar way to how some queer

01:19:30.500 people now might look at ann lister as sort of a role model she kind of looked to them as as a

01:19:36.700 role model of just kind of like a way that you can exist outside of the usual gender binary that

01:19:41.840 two women could live together in a committed way um could you talk a bit about either of you just

01:19:48.720 about ann lister's visit to them um and what that might have meant to her yes lister and her aunt

01:19:53.980 ann visit north wales in uh the summer of 1822 and they're traveling sort of all over but she

01:20:02.040 is really really intent on going and meeting the ladies of langochland and she is sort of yeah

01:20:08.180 like kind of hovering around the area that they live in for a while um and she manages to get

01:20:14.700 through um a local innkeeper so where she and her aunt are staying um she's able to get an

01:20:20.040 introduction through them because it's not um because they are at this point they are celebrities

01:20:27.520 like the ladies of langochland were celebrities um they'd had byron had visited them i think

01:20:34.620 wordsworth visited them at one point like all these like really famous literary figures had

01:20:38.520 specifically gone and met them so yeah if we're thinking about fandom as well like alistair was

01:20:43.820 being a bit of a fangirl like she was really wanting to go and meet these two people and

01:20:49.220 yeah so she i mean she managed it she went and met um sarah ponsonby and had this little meeting

01:20:55.580 with her because um Eleanor Butler had I think it's kind of the equivalent of cataracts and

01:21:01.620 she'd had she'd had a kind of surgery so she'd had eye surgery but she couldn't meet with her

01:21:06.420 but Lister was able to meet with Sarah Ponsonby and they have a chat and they're talking about

01:21:10.240 literature and they're talking about life um and she writes this very long journal entry about

01:21:15.700 about this meeting and the significance of this meeting to her I think quite a lot of Lister

01:21:20.160 scholars have talked about this specific trip and I think because it is just so ripe in terms of

01:21:25.300 that it's so reflective of i think how a lot of us now feel about queer people in the past of

01:21:32.880 wanting that connection wanting to have that conversation with them and lister got to have

01:21:38.900 that like she got to have that conversation with them if we think of it in sort of like 0.72

01:21:43.380 anachronistic terms of like she got to talk to her queer elders she got to meet one of her queer 0.75

01:21:47.640 elders and have a full-on confab with her and she gives her a rose from the garden um and she leaves 0.83

01:21:55.000 and she's yeah she's she's very affected by it she feels and i mean she describes feeling very low

01:21:59.800 after she's come away from class new earth um because it just has been so impactful to her

01:22:05.680 i love that just when it because i was researching for this episode and then for next week's episode

01:22:09.760 and i realized like oh my gosh she got to meet because the timeline like they're quite a bit

01:22:14.120 older than her but they were still around so exactly like you said just to be able to

01:22:17.920 to meet them and also um i think it's so just in terms of ann lister's story queer history in

01:22:25.500 general i think just to always be um finding and elevating and reminding everybody like look at

01:22:32.300 these queer icons in history like it's it wasn't just invented in the 20th century like um gender

01:22:39.420 non-conforming people have always been around i think that's so important for people to to know

01:22:44.040 and to acknowledge and to find these people and learn about them. And even like Ann Lister,

01:22:48.620 who is like a chaotic, I think I said at the beginning, just a real problematic fave, but

01:22:53.420 it's like the fandom that she has, I appreciate because, um, she is one of the queer people from

01:23:01.460 this time period who we know the most about because of these diaries. But then for her to

01:23:05.180 look back to the ladies of Hland Goughlin to be like, wow, this is, these people are similar to 0.84

01:23:10.020 me and for, so for her to have that kind of role model, like in the ladies of Klangoklan, I don't

01:23:15.400 know who they were looking back to, but like there have been these sorts of, um, these role

01:23:21.000 models for people. And I think it's just really valuable to keep elevating their stories, even as

01:23:25.780 the Anne Lester thing is so like you were describing Kit, the, how she's become sort of

01:23:31.260 an avatar for these very contemporary discussions, which kind of takes away from like, but who was

01:23:36.140 she really like she was a complicated um person with all these conflicting parts to her anyway

01:23:44.120 i don't i'm just saying i think it's so moving that she got to meet the ladies of langochland

01:23:48.800 and i think that that's because i know people go there for similar tourism reasons as well like

01:23:55.600 just in terms of like queer history places you can go there's so few people we know about where

01:24:00.800 there were there have been so many queer people in history but their stories just aren't well known

01:24:04.380 and these are kind of two and i'm happy to to bring them on this podcast to talk about them

01:24:09.620 i want to ask both of you um if you have because if people are like wow these two people they know

01:24:16.740 so much stuff i know that you both do um work um in the field of queer history um how could people

01:24:23.880 get in touch with you if they want to to work with you in some way or to just read what you're

01:24:28.120 what you're doing yeah find me on um instagram kham writer find me on blue sky kr him um find

01:24:34.920 me on my website keep up to date with um stuff that i'm writing and stuff i'm doing um with

01:24:39.820 museums i have a new book which i've almost finished so um you can take a look out for that

01:24:44.080 um yeah sarah what about you i've got a website sarah wingrove.com um where i have everything

01:24:50.520 linked i've had quite a few of the uh different papers that i've given about lister and her world

01:24:56.400 have been recorded so if you want to go and watch those back then you can

01:24:59.380 um i'm also on blue sky i think it's sas.wingrove or sas wingrove at blue sky

01:25:05.240 um yeah i popped things on there and i wanted to say before we finished so obviously this is

01:25:11.420 vulgar history yeah um i did look up because i know that lista said she described a lot of

01:25:17.060 things as being vulgar so i looked up how many times she said like described things as vulgar

01:25:23.100 in her journals because i thought you'd appreciate it yeah and from what i could find i think

01:25:29.240 she in the entirety of her journals she describes things as being vulgar uh 225 times

01:25:36.720 the highest count is in 1824 when she describes things as vulgar 22 times the only caveat so i

01:25:44.180 think it brings it down a little bit is 14 of those instances across the journals she's specifically

01:25:50.460 referencing um vulgar or common fractions so i think mathematical over 200 instances where

01:25:58.620 she's describing people places and things as being vulgar so that's this is the perfect podcast

01:26:05.180 to talk about her on she would be so angry about it um yes

01:26:11.080 well thank you both so much i just want to remind the listeners as well so my book rebel of the

01:26:17.620 regency the scandalous saga of carolina brunswick britain's uncrown queen is coming out in north

01:26:22.120 america um in february 2026 and you can get all the information about that at rebel of the regency

01:26:27.660 dot com and i'm crossing my fingers and hoping that some uk publisher publishes it too because

01:26:32.420 like it's about your country so like why wouldn't somebody jump on this so hopefully they will as

01:26:37.340 well um anyway kit hey i'm sarah wingrove thank you so much for joining me yeah well here's the

01:26:44.500 thing i mean i would love to see it in the uk but also i'm just like because i know people are

01:26:49.100 really weird about the royal family there so um we'll see how they take it if it does show up

01:26:54.000 i'd be interested in reading it well i mean just to learn about pergami i have a picture of him in

01:26:59.000 it so you can see the mustache yes

01:27:03.640 anyway thank you both so much thank you so much for having me thanks hi hello it's me again just

01:27:13.340 kidding about ending the episode, I realized after I finished recording with Kit and Sarah

01:27:17.420 that I'd forgotten to get their thoughts about a score for Ann Lister. So if you're a new listener

01:27:22.920 to this podcast, or if you just like reminders of things, at the end of these episodes, where

01:27:28.320 we're talking about a person's life from birth to death, I like to score them on what we call

01:27:33.820 the Frederick and Memorial Scandaliciousness Scale. And so I've been doing this for since

01:27:39.020 2019 since the podcast started and I can't stop now. So we score everybody in four different

01:27:44.540 categories. And it's really important this season that I remember to do this because with the whole

01:27:49.460 Regency vibes of it all, I've decided I want to reward the diamond of the season at the end of

01:27:55.600 this Regency era series like they do on Bridgerton. And so we need to get these scores. And so the

01:28:01.320 diamond of the season is not going to necessarily be the person with the highest score, but that

01:28:05.900 will be part of the consideration like on dancing with the stars there's the judges score and then

01:28:10.520 there's the audience vote so i think we're going to have these scores and then at the end of the

01:28:14.100 series or towards the end of the series you can all help vote for who's the diamond of the season

01:28:18.560 but i mean come on ann lister we need to we need to give this a score this episode so what the

01:28:24.860 categories are are the first category is scandalousness which is how scandalous did 0.98

01:28:30.640 Ann Lister. How did people perceive her in her time and place? The second category is scheminess,

01:28:37.520 which can be in the form of literal schemes or just somebody who's really ambitious and really

01:28:42.080 flexible in the face of life's twists and turns. Significant, significance in their time,

01:28:48.780 significance to history is the next category. And the final category is what we call the sexism

01:28:53.320 bonus, which for some people, that's where they can make up some scores they might not get in

01:28:57.860 other categories. But it's really thinking, how much did living in a patriarchal society

01:29:03.020 impact this person? And how much more could they have maybe done if that wasn't the situation?

01:29:07.920 So I emailed both Kit and Sarah. And so I'm going to, ah, my cat has thoughts as well. She just

01:29:13.140 walked across the laptop keyboard as I was trying to open this email. That's Hepburn. She's my cat. 0.99

01:29:18.720 To new listeners, please know she's great. So here are Kit's thoughts for the first category,

01:29:23.180 skandaliciousness. Kit says, when you combine the relationships with the dress and the financial

01:29:27.580 independence. I reckon this is a solid 10 out of 10. Sarah says, I'm going to give her an eight

01:29:33.400 because I think Lister was also very good at conforming when she needed to. And there are so

01:29:37.380 many instances of her pointing to others and their scandals behavior to distract from her own.

01:29:42.340 So I'm going to average that out a 10 from Kit and eight from Sarah. I'm going to say nine out of 10

01:29:46.560 for scandalousness. The next category is scheminess. Kit says, I mean, this is how she

01:29:51.460 got most of her hookups, including with plenty of quote unquote straight women. Nine is what Kit 0.99

01:29:57.100 says, Sarah says 10 out of 10 for Miss Ann Lister. Ever the planner, she had a scheme for pretty much 0.95

01:30:01.980 everything, and they would generally be incredibly thought out and meticulous in nature. I would say

01:30:06.260 the scheminess of just inventing her code, frankly. So 10 out of 10 for scheminess for Ann Lister.

01:30:12.880 The next category is significance. And Kit says, her journals are second to none, even without the

01:30:18.160 queerness. So 10 out of 10 for significance. And Sarah says, I agree with Kit. Her journals reveal 0.93

01:30:23.160 so much about not only queer life in late Georgian and early Victorian eras, but life

01:30:27.620 in general and all its minutiae in great detail. She's also such a significant figure for so many

01:30:32.640 people now, and her impact cannot be underplayed. 10 out of 10. I agree. 10 out of 10 significance.

01:30:38.360 The fourth category, sexism. Kit says, I think she definitely experienced it, but wasn't held

01:30:43.340 back by it as much as many women at the time, maybe a four. Sarah says, I would argue that

01:30:48.900 sexism impact her in ways we do not always immediately see because we think of her as so

01:30:53.420 singular but she still experienced it much like any other woman of her era it frustrated her to

01:30:57.580 no end when she was denied access to spaces or had her efforts undermined because she was a woman

01:31:02.520 absolutely she challenged sexism and often succeeded but it still shaped her life and

01:31:06.420 those of her partners seven out of ten so i'm gonna go with a higher score there we're gonna

01:31:10.640 go with a seven to round up with sarah's higher score which gives ann lister a total score of 36

01:31:16.000 out of 40 in terms of this series the regency era series this you know this is a high score for now

01:31:23.300 but we've only done two episodes so far but still i think this is this puts her up in the top 10 of

01:31:29.580 all time people we've ever profiled on this podcast which i think is correct because we give

01:31:34.180 great marks to people who are schemey and scandalous especially when they're also

01:31:38.000 significant and that's ann lister's whole vibe like literally she's in the top 10 now

01:31:41.340 if you go to my website which is vulgarhistory.com at the top there's a button that says scores

01:31:45.280 And so you can see all the scores of all the people who, from all the past episodes, to see where your faves might land.

01:31:52.980 And so this Anne Lister is just slightly above fellow queer Georgian-era person, Le Chevalier Dayon, who had a 35.5. 0.77

01:32:02.120 I'm just looking for other. Mary Queen of Scots, who had some queer elements to her story. 0.72

01:32:07.740 She would wear trousers sometimes, and she was very close to her ladies-in-waiting in a very good friend's way, perhaps.

01:32:14.300 She has a 36, same as Ann Lister

01:32:16.780 And Jenga of

01:32:18.520 Andongo, who we profiled

01:32:20.800 Is also a queer figure who had some gender

01:32:22.700 Some gender bending 0.99

01:32:25.660 In her story as well 1.00

01:32:27.500 Has a 36 as well

01:32:28.600 So I'm delighted to kick this series off

01:32:31.460 With such a high score for Miss

01:32:33.220 Ann Lister

01:32:34.780 Lesbian icon

01:32:36.660 Next week on the podcast

01:32:38.680 If things go according to plan

01:32:40.900 Which they don't always, but I think they will this time 1.00

01:32:42.800 we're going to be looking at some more queer people from this era, so stay tuned for that

01:32:47.500 next week. Thank you so much for listening to Vulgar History. You can find out more about my

01:32:52.280 book, Rebel of the Regency, which is about Caroline of Brunswick, who Anne Lister, as we discussed,

01:32:57.680 even Anne Lister was writing about her in her diary. Nobody could not talk about Caroline of

01:33:01.340 Brunswick, the Rebel of the Regency era. My book, you can get all the information about it at

01:33:06.260 rebeloftheregency.com. And if you pre-order it, it comes out in February in North America,

01:33:11.780 and hopefully around the same time in the UK as well, and other places.

01:33:15.620 If you pre-order it and send me a picture of your receipt,

01:33:18.280 then you can get a free membership to my Patreon,

01:33:20.260 a free member to my sub stack,

01:33:21.420 and also a paper doll of Carolina Brunswick.

01:33:23.760 Anyway, thank you so much for listening to Vulgar History. 1.00

01:33:26.040 Until next time, keep your pants on and your tits out. 1.00

01:33:29.860 Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Anne Foster. 0.99

01:33:33.200 Editor is Christina Lumagi.

01:33:35.260 Theme music is by The Severn Duo.

01:33:37.660 Regency-era artwork by Karen Moynihan.

01:33:39.720 Social Media Videos by Magdalena Denson.

01:33:42.820 Transcripts of this podcast are available at vulgarhistory.com by Aveline Malek.

01:33:47.200 You can get early ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon

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Vulgar History - November 12, 2025

Anne Lister： Regency-Era Power Lesbian

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