Before the term lesbian was even coined, there was Anne Lister – a rich landowner who enjoyed a string of scandalous same-sex affairs during the buttoned-up 1800s.
She recorded her adventures in 26 volumes of secret diaries so saucy that her fearful family kept them hidden long after her death.
Lister also encrypted the sexual detail in a mix of Greek and her own codewords — for fear of the law of the time — and only in the 1980s was this ever translated.
To refer to orgasms, she wrote the word kiss, while diary entries had Xs in the margin for how many climaxes she had that day.
Now, the story of Britain’s “first modern lesbian” will be retold in Shibden Hall, BBC1’s eight-part series written and directed by Happy Valley creator Sally Wainwright.
Read entire article by Kate Jackson here @ The Sun
More About Anne Lister:
- ABC: The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister
- Wikipedia: The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister
- Goodreads: I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries, 1791-1840
- New Statesman: The Lesbian Dead Sea Scrolls
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