In fact, the majority of her writing concerns her everyday life and the running of the Shibden Hall estate.Īlthough at one point describing Shibden as 'pokey', Anne clearly loved the place and she carried out a lot of work there to make it not just a house but a home.Ĭlaire says: "She made a huge number of changes just in terms of the business of the estate. "She could be very charming when she wanted to be."īut Anne's journals don't only deal in her conquests.
In fact, says Claire, reading Anne's diaries shows her to be quite a charmer, with a large number of women falling under her spell.Ĭlaire says: "She approached an awful lot of women, including married women, and it doesn't sound like she was rejected very often. "And, though she doesn't refer to it in the sort of language we use today, it is clear to see a sexual element in her relationships." "It's almost like you can see relationships developing as they go along." Much of the landscaping around Shibden was commissioned by Anne She talks about how she likes a particular woman, how she is interested and how she has spoken to them. "Although bits of it do talk about things like the financial aspects of her life - which she was quite embarrassed about as she didn't have a lot of money - a large proportion of it does talk about her lesbian relationships in quite intimate detail."Īnne Lister's diaries really do contain the sort of information one might find in many modern diaries - something which might come as a surprise when you think they were written for the most part before Queen Victoria was even on the throne.Ĭlaire says: "She talks about her tactics for wooing women. It is this aspect of her life which forms the basis for the new BBC film.Ĭlaire explains: "The part of the diary which I think will be featured most in the film, and I think what a lot of people are interested in, is the sixth of the diary which is in code, a code of her own devising.
"She recorded things like the weather, social events, national events and her business interests."ĭue to the strictures of the time, Anne was forced to keep her sexuality a secret from society at large, but her diaries reveal the truth about just what she got up to. Anne Lister oversaw the building of the tower library at Shibden HallĬlaire Selby, who is curator of Social History for Calderdale Museums and is based at Shibden Hall, says Anne's diaries are an amazing achievement in themselves.Ĭlaire says: "She wrote over 4,000,000 words and she talks about everything in her diary.
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