Anne Lister: Georgian businesswoman, diarist, traveller, gay

Anne Lister (1791-1840) was born in Halifax Yorks and spent her childhood in her parents’ home. And she was a regular visitor to her aunt’s grand family estate Shibden Hall. 

Portrait of Anne Lister in her customary dark clothes,
by Joshua Horner c1830, Shibden Hall

Lister was not raised to be in busin­ess, but to be a wife. When she was 7 she was sent to school in Ripon. In a society that taught girls to be ladylike, Lister emerged as a fiercely intelligent and strong-willed st­udent. Next she was educ­at­ed at home by the local vicar in 1801, then she was at boarding school. This was where Lister first fell in love with El­iza Raine, the illegitimate daughter of a deceas­ed East India Co surgeon who’d later inherit a fortune. Raine dreamed of making a life with Lister when school ended, but that failed. Lister bec­om­e closer to other girls at school and after just 2 years, she was expelled. It didn’t matter; as an adult Lister was passionate about trav­el, mak­ing many trips abroad.

Shibden Hall was W. Yorkshire manor house near Halifax, built c1420. Later it was bought by the wealthy Savile family, then the Water­house family. When Waterhouse sold Shibden in 1612, it was bought by Lister cousins. In 1614 Samuel Lister lived there, a tailor who, by careful marriages, brought Shibden into Lister ownership.

Lister met her land-owning neighbour Ann Walker when she moved to Shibden Hall in 1815. But it was years before the two women fell in love and exchanged vows in church. 

Holy Trinity Church, York where the couple took communion 

to seal their union,  1834, Wiki

Lister had to set a business education programme for herself in a male-dominated society; that way she could man­age the estate of c400 acres, with reven­ues from agricultural rents. In addition to income from agric­ultural ten­ancy, Lister's finances came from buying and selling pr­operty, shares in the canal and railway in­dustries, mining and stone qu­ar­ries. And she took control of her business interests herself, decid­ing on the investments with or without profess­ion­al advice. Additionally Ann Walk­er’s fortune was very well used by Lister. What an amaz­ing business mind!!

After her aunt's and father's death, Lister had full con­trol of Shib­den in 1836 and used her business income to rec­r­eate the estate. With architect John Harper, her changes included: ter­r­ac­ing of the south lawn, open­ing of the low ceiling house, Nor­man tower, or­namental lake and carr­iage drive to the gatehouse. Ot­h­er planned changes stopped.

Lister’s early diary habit grew into an obsession, calling the diar­ies her private memorial which helped to comfort her. She wrote her jour­n­als in volumes from 1817, and as time passed, she expanded on the de­­tails she wrote in her tiny handwriting. She jotted down notes on a sl­ate and wrote up her journal later that day. She used her own code to re­cord her most pr­ivate feelings, and accounts of the relat­ion­sh­ips with the women in her life. In any case, she was careful about who heard of the diaries.

The two Annes went on their final trip together in 1839, via France, Denmark, Sweden to Russia. Her last diary entry was for Aug 1840 when she was in Georgia’s Caucasus Moun­tains. 6 weeks later she died in Sept 1840 at 49, from a fever. Her wife Ann Walker br­ought the body back from Georgia, together with at least some of the diaries. From a 1850 list of the Shibden papers, it was clear that there was a bundle listed as Diar­ies and Journals of Mrs Lister, kept behind the panels at Shibden. Ann Walker inherited Shibden.

Following Walker’s death in 1854, John Lister, Anne Lister’s distant relative from Wales moved to Shibden with his family.

after Anne Lister’s death
In 1885 all male homosexual acts became illegal and public op­inion was very hostile, as seen in the 1895 trials of Oscar Wilde. The diaries went back into storage and when John Lister died in 1933, his kn­ow­ledge of the coded diaries was lost. Halifax Borough now became own­ers of Shibden, and the Borough Lib­rarian spent 2 years catal­oguing John Lis­ter’s books and letters. Tracking missing diary volum­es, they contacted antiquarian Arth­ur Bur­r­ell who found diary volumes and cr­acked Lister’s code.

Shibden Hall, Calderdale Museums
Anne Lister lived there from 1815 

 

In 1984 The Guardian wrote The 2 Mill­ion Word Enigma, opening up the diar­ies to a much wider audience. Helena Whitbread came into the West York­shire Archive Service Calder­dale, became intrigued by the diaries and produced two key publications in 1988 and 1992. Muriel Green’s Miss Lis­ter of Shibden Hall (1992) was published concent­rating on let­ters. They were inscribed in the UNESCO UK Memory of the World Regis­ter, making a substantial cultural significance cov­ering all aspects of her life: as landowner, business woman, travel­ler and gay woman.

See Gent­leman Jack, Anne’s life in Halifax, BBC/HBO TV.

See the Shibden Hall Ex­hib­­ition (Mar-Ap 2024).
Or read Anne Lister’s Diaries, by Manchester U.P, 2023