The Fascinating Life Of Anne Lister, The Inspiration For HBO's 'Gentleman Jack'

Born in 1791 to a minor aristocratic family, Lister claimed in her diary she was an “unmanageable tomboy” as a child and was “sent to school early because they could do nothing with me at home.” Lister was a bright student who focused on stereotypically unfeminine subjects, like Latin, math, and science, and she educated herself on the topics of ancient Greek and Roman poetry.

Lister started keeping extensive diaries when she was a teenager and continued the practice throughout her life. About one-sixth of Lister’s diaries are written in “crypthand,” or her own invented code derived from algebra and the Greek alphabet.

Convinced no one would ever be able to decode the steamier portions of her journals, Lister detailed her various love affairs freely. However, she was wrong about the code being unbreakable.

The coded portions of Lister’s diarie weren’t deciphered until decades after her passing when one of her descendants, John Lister, cracked the code along with his friend Arthur Burrell and learned of his relative’s various love affairs with women in 1867.

Burrell urged John to burn the journals, but instead, he hid the diaries behind the wall paneling of Lister’s old room. When Shibden Hall became a museum, the diaries were rediscovered but remained largely unknown until the 1980s when a number of scholars published portions of them.

One of the scholars in question, Helena Whitbread, had uncovered a candid and detailed exposé of Lister’s life and sexuality, and she ensured Lister’s diary became a historic, important contribution to the canon of lesbian literature.

Totaling about 6,600 pages and four million words, Lister’s journals include the minutiae of day-to-day life, but they also tell the story of her emotional, psychological, and intimate landscape.

Lister was particularly candid when writing in her “crypthand,” which she did for about one-sixth of the diary, mainly exploring the more intimate and passionate details of her various love affairs. Of Lister’s coded writings, scholar Helena Whitbread said:

It is groundbreaking stuff, absolutely explicit, every action is described. It’s very saucy and very riveting.

Lister had many lovers over her lifetime, and details about each were chronicled in her diaries. In the beginning, Lister fell in love with Eliza Raine, a Madras-born classmate at her boarding school. The two were roommates at the time and even exchanged rings.

When Lister moved on to courting other women, various sources report that Raine never recovered and lost her mind. Some sources even suggest Lister may have had something to do with Raine being committed to an asylum, though this has not been definitively proven as of 2019. 

In one of her diaries from 1820, Lister wrote:

I love & only love the fairer sex & thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any other love than theirs.

After her relationship with Eliza Raine cooled, Lister had a series of lovers. She courted Isabella “Tib” Norcliffe but left her after she was introduced to the love of her life, Mariana Belcombe.

Lister fell in love with Belcombe, “M” as she’s referred to in the diaries, around her 20s. Their affair continued for some time, despite Lister’s devastation after Belcombe entered into a financially advantageous marriage to Charles Lawton. Meanwhile, Lister courted a widow named Maria Barlow while living in Paris from 1824 to 1826.

At some point, Lister decided she wanted a partner who could help her attain a higher social status, settling on the young and wealthy Ann Walker. Walker and Lister married before traveling extensively together and having a complicated union.