I’m not ashamed to say it: recently, while snuggled up in my big tub with a cup of tea, I watched a lesbian melodrama. It was The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister. I had just spent several days researching Lister and thought a drama based on her life would be a pleasant conclusion to my studies. I was disappointed that the film shows a one-dimensional Lister, motivated only by her lusts. The film seems to fall into a trap we might all easily fall into: reducing Lister to her many sexual exploits.
Lister (1791–1840) was born in the English town of Halifax, West Yorkshire. She inherited her family seat, Shibden Hall, in 1826 and worked hard to improve the property, including adding a Gothic tower and opening a successful coal mine. But what’s caught people’s attention most of all is the content of her diaries.
Her first experience was at boarding school, Manor House, with a girl named Eliza Raine. When Lister was 19 she began a sexual relationship with Isabella Norcliffe. In 1812, Norcliffe introduced Lister to Marianna Belcombe. Lister ditched Norcliffe for Belcombe, fell in love, but was distressed when Belcombe, because of family pressure and for financial reasons, married a widower named Charles Lawton. However, the two women didn’t stop seeing one another.
Lister considered herself married to Belcombe, but not monogamously, and soon resumed sleeping with Norcliffe. She also seduced at least one of Belcombe’s sisters, also named Anne. Lister wrote, “Talking . . . but then got more loving. Kissed her, told her I had a pain in my knees — my expression to her for desire — & saw plainly she liked me & would yield again, without much difficulty, to opportunity & importunity.” By 1824, Lister was also making frequent trips to Paris to see another of her partners, Maria Barlow.