Anne Lister

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Antiquarians and local historians have for generations known AL as an early nineteenth-century diarist and have made use of her diary (which amounts to about four million extant words in twenty-four quarto volumes, a sixth of it in a secret cipher) as historical material, ignoring or concealing the coded, sexual (that is, lesbian) passages. She also left about 900 extant letters.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
  • BirthName: Anne Lister

Milestones

3 April 1791

AL was born at South Cave, near Hull in Yorkshire, one of six children.
Lister, Anne. “Introduction”. I Know My Own Heart, edited by Helena Whitbread, New York University Press, 1992, p. xxiii - xxix.
xxiii

21 March 1817

AL wrote the entry with which editor Helena Whitbread chose to open her first volume: from this point, says Whitbread, the diary becomes more accessible.
Lister, Anne. I Know My Own Heart. Editor Whitbread, Helena, New York University Press, 1992.
1
Lister, Anne. “Introduction”. I Know My Own Heart, edited by Helena Whitbread, New York University Press, 1992, p. xxiii - xxix.
xxiv

20 August 1823

AL wrote in her diary a statement echoing Rousseau : I know my own heart, and understand my fellow man. From this her editor Helena Whitbread titled the first printed volume of the diary.
The words I know my own heart are also written on more than occasion by Richardson 's heroine Clarissa, though it is uncertain whether AL intended any allusion.
qtd. in
Rowanchild, Anira. “’Everything done for effect’: Georgic, Gothic and picturesque in Anne Lister’s self-production”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
7
, No. 1, 2000, pp. 89-104.
96

11 August 1840

AL made her final diary entry, one month and ten days before she died.
Lister, Anne. Miss Lister of Shibden Hall. Editor Green, Muriel, Book Guild, 1992.
205

22 September 1840

AL died in Kutaisi, West Georgia, near the Black Sea, of a fever carried by a local species of tick.
Nicholls, C. S., editor. The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons. Oxford University Press, 1993.
Lister, Anne. “Introduction”. I Know My Own Heart, edited by Helena Whitbread, New York University Press, 1992, p. xxiii - xxix.
xxvi
Birch, Dinah. “Grubbling”. London Review of Books, 21 Jan. 1999, pp. 10-11.
11

Biography

Birth and Background

3 April 1791

AL was born at South Cave, near Hull in Yorkshire, one of six children.
Lister, Anne. “Introduction”. I Know My Own Heart, edited by Helena Whitbread, New York University Press, 1992, p. xxiii - xxix.
xxiii