Foreword by Emma Donoghue
This is the collection of papers based on material from the Lister archives, approached from a variety of angles. [Note: Not all of the material touches on her sexuality, but I will blog everything, though some coverage may be briefer than others.]
The front matter includes a forward by Emma Donoghue, an introduction by Chris Roulston (one of the editors), and a conversation between Carolyn Gonda (the other editor) and Helena Whitbread.
Donoghue gives a brief background to Lister and an exploration of some of the facets of her life that are fascinating to modern researchers and the general public. She notes some of the curious paradoxes of Lister’s life and personality.
Introduction by Chris Roulston
Roulston notes the sheer magnitude of Lister’s diaries, and provides a capsule history of them. There has been a tendency to see the diaries as a unique artifact. The lack of comparable material from the era creates problems of interpretation, as it is difficult to determine how representative they are. The papers in this volume explore both how the Lister archives shed light on 19th century history, and how 19th-century history created the conditions in which Lister existed.
The unique nature of the archive lies behind how Anne Lister has become both a scholarly and popular icon. Her life participates not only in how we see the past, but how we engage with commemorating and presenting that past. There is a constant conversation in this volume between past and present.
Lister challenged norms of gender and sexuality, but also was strongly rooted in conservative social and political realities. Due to the private nature of the diaries and the use of encryption to obscure certain content, Lister’s diaries offer an unrivaled glimpse into one woman’s thoughts on her own identity and sexuality, how those factors affected her life, and how she strove to manage those forces.
One key factor in the 19th century (and neighboring eras) was the separation of female and male social spaces, and the general acceptance and approval of romantic and intimate friendships between women. Within this dynamic, for a friendship to shift into eroticism could be trivial.
Although Lister is the lens through which we are given a glimpse into these queer relationships, she is scarcely the only woman whose same sex eroticism is detailed in the diaries. Her lovers (and there were many of them) and certain acquaintances participated in homoerotic relations without necessarily sharing Lister’s gender transgression. At the same time, Lister was not unique in the 19th century in combining homoeroticism with gender nonconformity. (This part of the introduction is also serving as a survey of key prior scholarship relevant to Lister studies.)
Lister's gender identity existed in a liminal space. She considered her behavior “gentlemanly” and on a few occasions fantasized about having a penis or passing as a man. But when one lover suggested that she should have been born a boy, Lister protested that being male would have excluded her from free access to “ladies’ society.”
While some of her lovers enjoyed – or at least accepted – sexual relationships with men, Lister is always adamant about rejecting the idea of heterosexual marriage and feeling only revulsion for male attention. Yet the idea of marriage was a strong attraction and Lister’s steady goal was to find a female marriage partner and go through conventional ritual and symbolic forms associated with it.
Although Lister’s gender and sexuality are a continual theme in her diaries, the material encompasses multiple other topics, reflected in the five sections of this volume. The introduction then summarizes the contents.
1. Caroline Gonda in Conversation with Helena Whitbread
This interview allows Whitbread to provide a personal history of how she encountered and worked with the Lister archives.