Anne Lister (3 April 1791 – 22 September 1840) was an English diarist and landowner, famous for revelations for which she was dubbed "the first modern lesbian".
Lister was from a minor landowning family at Shibden in Calderdale, West Riding of Yorkshire. She had several lesbian love affairs from her schooldays onwards, often on long trips abroad; muscular and androgynous in appearance, always dressed in black and highly educated, she was later known—generally unkindly—as "Gentleman Jack". Her final significant relationship was with Ann Walker, to whom she was notionally married in Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York, which is now celebrated as the birthplace of lesbian marriage in Britain.
Lister's diaries reveal much about contemporary life in the West Riding of Yorkshire, including her development of historic Shibden Hall and her interests in medicine, mathematics, landscaping, mining, railways and canals. Many entries were written in code that was not decrypted until long after her death. Containing graphic portrayals of lesbian relationships, these diaries were so frank that they were thought to be a hoax until their authenticity was confirmed.
Anne Lister was the second child and eldest daughter of Captain Jeremy Lister (1753–1836) who, as a young man in 1775, served with the British 10th Regiment of Foot in the Battles of Lexington and Concord in the American War of Independence. In August 1788, he married Rebecca Battle (1770–1817) of Welton in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Their first child, John, was born in 1789 but died the same year. Anne Lister was born in Halifax on 3 April 1791. The family moved in 1793 to an estate named Skelfler House at Market Weighton, which is where Anne spent her earliest years. A second son, Samuel, who was close to Anne, was born in 1793. The Listers had four sons and three daughters, but only Anne and her younger sister Marian (born 13 October 1798) survived past 20 years old.
At the age of seven, Lister was sent to a school in Agnesgate, Ripon, run by a Mrs Hagues and a Mrs Chettle. Between 1801 and 1804, she was educated at home by the Reverend George Skelding, who was the vicar of Market Weighton. Whenever she visited her aunt Anne and Uncle James at Shibden Hall, the Misses Mellin gave her lessons.
While being educated at home, Lister developed an interest in classical literature. In a surviving letter to her aunt from 3 February 1803, the eleven-year-old Lister explains, "My library is my greatest pleasure... The Grecian History had pleased me much."
In 1805, Anne Lister was sent to the Manor House School in York (in the King's Manor buildings), where Anne met her first love, Eliza Raine (1791–1860). Raine was the illegitimate, half-Indian daughter of an East India Company surgeon in Madras, brought to Yorkshire after his death and set to inherit a substantial amount of money. Lister and Raine shared a bedroom at the boarding school. Raine later became a patient at Clifton House Asylum, run by Belcombe's father, William, in 1814. Eliza Raine was later transferred to Terrace House in Osbaldwick and died there on 31 December 1860. She is buried in the Osbaldwick churchyard across the road.
Lister inherited the Shibden estate on her uncle's death in 1826, but she only controlled part of its income until the deaths of both her father and her aunt in 1836, when their shares of the income passed to her. In addition to earnings from the agricultural tenancy, Lister's financial portfolio included properties in town, shares in the canal and railway industries, mining, and stone quarries. Her wealth allowed her some measure of freedom to live as she pleased, and she used the income from her varied portfolio to finance her two passions: the renovation of Shibden Hall, and European travel.
Lister is described as having a "masculine appearance". One of her lovers, Mariana Lawton (née Belcombe), was initially ashamed to be seen in public with her because of the comments made on Lister's appearance. She dressed entirely in black (as was normal for gentlemen at the time) and took part in many activities that were not perceived as the norm for women of the time, such as opening and owning a colliery. She was referred to as "Gentleman Jack" in some quarters.
Lawton and Lister were lovers, on and off, for about two decades, including a period during which Lawton was married and to which her husband became resigned.
Although Lister had met her on various occasions in the 1820s, Ann Walker—who by 1832 had become a wealthy heiress—took on a much more substantial role in Lister's later life. Eventually the women took communion together on Easter Sunday (30 March) 1834 in Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York, and thereafter considered themselves married, but without legal recognition. The church has been described as "an icon for what is interpreted as the site of the first lesbian marriage to be held in Britain", and the building now hosts a commemorative blue plaque. The couple lived together at Shibden Hall until Lister's death in 1840.
Lister renovated Shibden Hall quite significantly to her own design. In 1838, she added a Gothic tower to the main house, to serve as her private library. She also had a tunnel dug under the building so the staff could move about without disturbing her.
Throughout her life, Lister had a strong Anglican faith, and she remained a Tory, "interested in defending the privileges of the land-owning aristocracy".
Lister greatly enjoyed travel, although her biographer Angela Steidele suggests her trips in later life were also a way to "evade the self realisation that she had failed at everything she set her hand to". She made her first trip to continental Europe in 1819, when she was 28 years old, travelling with her 54-year-old aunt (also called Anne Lister) on a two-month trip to France.
She returned to Paris in 1824 and stayed there until the following year. Returning to Paris with her Aunt Anne in 1826, she resumed an affair with a widow named Maria Barlow whom she had met on her previous visit to the city. She set out from Paris with Barlow in 1827 on a tour of northern Italy and Switzerland, returning to Shibden Hall the following year. In 1828, she travelled extensively in Scotland with Sibella MacLean.
Lister set out for the continent again in 1829. Using Paris as her base, she visited Belgium and Germany before heading south to the Pyrenees where she did some hiking and crossed the border into Spain. While there, she demonstrated both her strong adventurous streak and considerable physical fitness by ascending Monte Perdido (11,007 ft; 3,355 m), the third highest peak in the Pyrenees.
Returning to Shibden Hall in 1831, Lister found life with her father and sister Marian so uncomfortable that she left again almost immediately to visit the Netherlands for a short trip with Mariana Lawton. Altogether, between 1826 and 1832, she spent only a short period of time at Shibden Hall, her travels around Britain and Europe allowing her to avoid spending time at home with her family.
She again visited France and Switzerland in 1834, this time for her honeymoon with Ann Walker. Returning with Walker in 1838, she headed south to the Pyrenees and completed the first tourist ascent of the Vignemale, the highest peak in the French Pyrenees (10,820 ft; 3,300 m). This required a ten-hour hike to reach the top and another seven hours to descend.