Anne Lister: Regency-Era Power Lesbian

Vulgar History Podcast

Anne Lister: Regency-Era Power Lesbian 

November 12, 2025

Ann: Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and we are in our Regency Era. We’re talking about various people who lived in Great Britain during the early 1800s and how the time period is maybe not as much like a Jane Austen novel as you might have thought. Although last week, we talked about Jane Austen, and you learned her life wasn’t like a Jane Austen novel. So, whose is really? 

Anyway, we’re talking about Anne Lister, queer icon, and I have two guests who know so much more about this than I do, and that’s why they’re here. Our first guest is a returning guest. Kit Heyam is a writer, heritage practitioner and trans awareness trainer. Welcome Kit, welcome back!

Kit: Thank you so much for having me. Lovely to be here again. 

Ann: And we have a first-time guest. Sarah Wingrove is an interdisciplinary scholar working across literary studies, sociology, and histories of sexuality and gender, specializing in lesbian and queer studies from the late 18th century onwards. Welcome, Sarah. 

Sarah: Delighted to be on the podcast. 

Ann: Anne Lister. People listening to this podcast who’ve maybe never heard that name. So, she was a queer— Actually, you know what? Let’s talk about this. What are our pronouns for Anne Lister? What’s the… Kit, just raise your eyebrows. [laughs] What are we going with today? 

Kit: It’s a great question. Anne used ‘she’ in life. In my book, Before We Were Trans, I used ‘they’ because I deliberately want to foreground the extent to which Anne Lister was certainly ambivalent about womanhood, I think, or about what womanhood meant to her in her period. So, I would argue for either or perhaps both of those. What are your thoughts, Sarah? 

Sarah: I think I’m on the same page. In my work, I generally use ‘she/her,’ and that’s just because, as you said, that’s what she’s using in the journals, in the remaining archival documents. But I also don’t see any issue with using ‘they/she’ interchangeably with Lister. Because I think, as you said, I don’t think that’s inaccurate to describe Lister. I think ambivalent to gender is quite a good way of phrasing it. 

Ann: So, for people who don’t know who Anne Lister is, could either of you just give a brief overview of who is this person? Why do we know about her? 

Kit: I’m going to let Sarah do that. You’re the expert, and you could give a little context on why Anne Lister is important and what your area of study is, I guess, as well. 

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. So, Anne was born on the 3rd of April, 1791, in Halifax. She lived a very complicated life, a very busy life, really. There’s so many different words that are used to describe her. Primarily, most people know her as a diarist first. She was a traveller. She was an entrepreneur. So many different words are used to describe her. A landowner is another quite key, important one. But I think the most known phrasing and description of her is as the first modern lesbian, it’s how a lot of people know her. 

Something that I’ve noticed is a lot of times, when that phrase is used, the first modern lesbian, no one cites where that’s from. And it’s from an online article by Rictor Norton, who is a LGBT historian. He wrote this article about Anne Lister in the early 2000s. I think it then went up on his website, I want to say around 2011, something like that, probably corresponding with the TV film, The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister. But it is that blog post where he sort of uses that phrase for the first time, and then it’s been picked up by lots of other people. 

Kit: That really tracks because Rictor Norton is quite a fan of using… I think he’s really invested in finding the roots of modern queer identities in especially the 18th century, which is something I feel a bit complicated about. So yeah, it really tracks that he’s the origin of that phrase. 

Ann: Well, and I wanted to just clarify, sorry, just in terms of the diaries. Again, just imagining someone who’s never heard of her before. So, on the podcast, my listeners will have heard other people where I talk about people from history, where it’s like, “Well, we don’t know, they were roommates, they were very good friends,” you know? Those sorts of things. Or like, “This man wrote these passionate love letters to this other man, but men just wrote letters like that back then.” Like, we don’t know what’s going on in the bedrooms of these people. But Anne Lister, we know in detail…

Sarah: Great detail.

Ann: … what’s happening every time she gets in a bedroom with somebody else. Like, she was having sexual relations with women. We’re not just being like, “Oh, maybe.” Like, can you explain the diary, Sarah? 

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. So, in terms of my work, I look at her journals, her travel journals, her travel notes, and her correspondence, and sort of connecting all those different archival documents and understanding how they interact with one another. And, I mean, if we’re talking about language, different people describe them in different ways; some people say that they’re her diaries, some people say that they’re her journals. Again, I generally describe them as journals, because that’s how she describes them in the text. But again, I don’t think it’s wrong to say diary, because that’s also just the more popular term for what we have left of her archive. 

It runs over 5 million words; about a sixth of it was written in a single replacement cipher, which she came up with. There’s sort of some speculation whether she did that in collaboration with her first known partner, Eliza Raine. And yeah, she uses that to obscure significant parts of her journal, particularly anything to do with her body, anything to do with her clothing. If there’s anything that she deems as embarrassing about money, gossip. But then, the really key one that we all know is her intimate relationships with women. 

Ann: And the diaries, I think this is also such an interesting thing. There are so many people in history who wrote diaries like this, and then they were like, “When I die, burn this,” or descendants get rid of it, or nobody found it. So, can you explain how the diary still exists? How people were able to find it to decode it? 

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. Lister died quite suddenly, so we understand. Her last journal entry is from the 11th of August, 1840. We know that she doesn’t actually die until the 22nd of September, so there’s, like, yeah, 41, 42 days in between that. We don’t know what happened between them, whether she was writing another journal that we haven’t got back. But she died while she and her partner, Ann Walker, were in Kutaisi, which is modern-day Georgia, like very, very long way from home. 

The group, I mean, I’m probably going to mention multiple times during this podcast, the group In Search of Ann Walker have done some incredible research about the journey that Ann Walker took to get home, but also how she fought to get Anne Lister’s body and her journals that were there back home to Halifax. And it is, I mean, that in and of itself is a whole discussion, that entire journey back, because it took months and months and months. She was a woman, yeah, travelling across Europe, mostly, like a good chunk of it, by herself in 1840. 

But the journals. So, after Ann Walker died, the journals were put into a cupboard in Shibden Hall, which was Anne Lister’s home, put behind a panel, hidden away. And then a descendant of hers, John Lister MA, who is, I want to say, a second cousin, inherits the house, and he’s very interested. He’s an antiquarian, he’s very interested in history and in local history of Halifax. So, he starts transcribing all the journals, and his friend, Arthur Burrell, who is another member of the Halifax Antiquarian Society, starts helping him. I think this is really lovely, actually; the first word that they managed to crack is the word ‘hope,’ which I think is delightful. 

But once they’ve cracked the cipher, they then start finding everything else that’s in the journals. And up until that point, so for several years, John Lister MA had been publishing extracts of Lister’s journals in the local newspaper, saying like, “The life of a lady 50 years ago. Isn’t this so interesting? We have this really detailed description of what’s been happening in Halifax 50 years ago.” So, I mean, we’re so invested in Lister now, but even people in the sort of late 19th century were also really interested in her journals as well. 

Anyway, once they find out what’s in the journals and the fact that it’s that she’s having sex with a lot of women and very intimate relationships with women, Arthur Burrell initially says, “You need to destroy these, you need to burn them.” And thankfully for us, John Lister decides not to do that. He puts them back into the panelled cupboard in Shibden, and they stay there until after his death. Something to note is that Arthur Burrell did later say, I think to an archivist in Halifax, that he regretted suggesting that they’d be burned, and that he was glad that they weren’t burned. So, a bit of a positive there. 

Anyway, they go back into the walls, and then once he dies, he leaves Shibden Hall to the local council for the land to be made into a public park. And so, then you get Muriel Green, who was studying library studies, she goes through all of the papers that Lister left and that they find in these panelled walls, and she starts continuing this work. She gets the code as well and starts transcribing. She specifically focuses on Lister’s letters. 

But yeah, thinking about that, we are very, very lucky to have Lister’s archive at all, because there was that very serious risk of them being burned. 

Ann: It’s just such a fascinating story of the right people finding them at the right time that they remain, because so many people’s papers are gone. And like you said, when he was first publishing it, there’s so much that’s interesting about them. I mean, especially today, we’re going to focus on the queer history and stuff, but also just for anything, to read a daily diary of somebody in this time period, it’s fascinating! Just the minutia of it, I would imagine. 

Sarah: So much minutia. [laughs] 

Ann: It’s like the reverse of last year, I did an episode about Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. And Thomas Jefferson wrote plethorous of amounts of diaries, but they were all just like, “Here are the bank transactions I did today.” It’s not interesting to me personally, but this is, like, a true diary. I would imagine there’s a combination of these are the bank transactions, but also with like, here’s what’s happening, here’s what everybody’s talking about. 

So, if we’re going to just kind of look at Anne Lister’s life in the context of her era, and she was a very singular person for the era. This is not a typical person living in England at this time. But her life, I would imagine, starts off like any sort of… Wealthy, right? They’re wealthy-ish… They own property, so imagine it’s a wealthy family. 

Sarah: Yeah, sort of middling. I think one of the things that Lister talks about is that her father is really terrible with finances, so I think it kind of fluctuates over the course of her young adult life. And I think it is – I don’t think I’m wrong in saying this, I mean, Kit, correct me if I’m wrong – one of the reasons that she’s able to inherit Shibden is because she’s able to persuade her uncle to leave it to her rather than her father, his brother, partly because of her capabilities financially. 

Kit: I think that’s right, yeah. And I guess, I mean, we can talk about the ways in which her relationship with her money and her land makes her a problematic fave, but like, she shows herself to be pretty adept with managing the estate, right? 

Ann: I think all the interesting stuff really happens in her adult life. But like, what was her childhood? What was her education? She was, I would imagine, educated quite well, just given where she was living and her family’s cultural role. 

Kit: She had some little schoolgirl romances, right? [Sarah laughs] One of the places I take people when I give my walking tour of York’s hidden queer history is King’s Manor Girls’ School, where she was. There’s no proof it has anything to do with Lister, but there is some lesbian graffiti on the window of King’s Manor, “With this diamond I cut this glass, with these lips I kissed a lass.” It was a girls’ school; that was girls who were kissing the lasses. So, they were all at it, Anne Lister was no exception. I don’t know if you want us something about it, Sarah.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, she was taught a little bit in Halifax. I think it’s in Halifax or Market Weighton. She’s taught a little bit at home. Her two brothers get sent off to school. She goes to the Manor School, and that’s where she meets Eliza Raine, her first partner, who lived 1791 to 1860. 

Ann: How old is she when this relationship happened? She’s a teenager. Is she more, like, 12 years old? Or is she more like 18 years old? 

Kit: Yeah, she starts at King’s Manor at the age of, I think, 14. 

Sarah: Yeah, because she starts in the journals. Certainly, the journals that we have, start when she’s 15. The point that we have with the journals is that she’s already left King’s Manor. 

Ann: So, this is before 15. Okay. 

Sarah: Yeah, so the first line in the journal says, it reads, “Eliza left us,” and it’s because she’s already home, and Eliza has been to visit during a break from school and has come to stay with them in Halifax, and then has gone back to school or to York, I don’t remember which. But by that point, Lister had left the school. 

Ann: So, when we’re talking about her in terms of relationships, the first one we know of, she’s probably 13, 14, or something like that? 

Kit: Yeah, she starts at the school when she’s 14. She shares a room with Eliza. So yeah, she’s like 14, 15. 

Ann: Oh, and they’re sharing a room? 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Ann: Convenient. 

Sarah: Yeah, they have the little attic room to themselves. 

Ann: And what do we know about this relationship? 

Kit: It doesn’t end well for Eliza, right? 

Sarah: Not the best. [laughs] Yeah, I mean, they’re together for a little while. This was one of the things that I studied as part of my doctoral research was, they take a trip in 1809. 

Kit: So, Anne is 18? 

Sarah: Yeah, 18. They’ve both left school by that point, and Anne has persuaded her mother, Rebecca, to take her to Scarborough because of her ill health. And just by chance, and this is my reading a bit, just by chance, they have to go and pick Eliza up and take her with them. [Kit chuckles] Yeah, exactly. So, they go from Halifax up to York, pick Eliza up en route. They also drop in and see, before she goes and sees Eliza, they go and drop in on her former teachers from the King’s Manor. 

So, another sort of idea that gets floated a little bit in Lister studies is this idea that Lister was kicked out of school because of homosexuality and her relationship with Eliza. I haven’t found anything to really concretely prove that, and I know that some of the Lister scholars more recently have said that they’ve gone through everything that we have, and there’s no concrete evidence that Lister was kicked out. And actually, the fact that I know that there’s this conversation between Lister and her former tutors that is very friendly, it doesn’t seem like there was really any animosity that indicates that she was kicked out. 

Anyway, they then go from York onto Scarborough. The only downside is we don’t have either of their records of what they did in Scarborough because Eliza didn’t keep any record whilst they were there. She just jumped from the day that she left York to the day that she goes back. 

Ann: Can I ask a question as a North American person? Is there anything to do in Scarborough? What kind of place is it? Is it, like, a beachside town? 

Kit: It’s at the seaside, it’s a spa town. 

Sarah: Yeah, it’s a spa town.

Ann: Okay, so a place that people go often. 

Sarah: For health, yes. It’s very much a health tour. 

Ann: Take the waters. 

Sarah: Yeah, take the waters, to bathe in the waters. That might not necessarily mean, like, getting in the sea. For some people, it did, particularly for men, it would mean going directly in the sea. Sometimes it would mean taking baths, different specific locations in the town. So, you’d go and see specialists and, yeah, drink the waters, imbibe them, but also bathe in them, depending on what your malady was, really. 

Ann: Who was ill at this point, that they needed to go to this town? 

Sarah: So, Lister has managed to persuade her friend, a Dr. Alexander, that he needs to persuade her mother, Rebecca Lister, to take her to Scarborough. And around this time, there are a couple of instances of Lister sort of having, like, a couple of fainting fits, not feeling very well. But also, this is also around the time that she starts going out drinking with her friends, and sort of staying out partying in Halifax, essentially, or sort of the early 19th century equivalent of that. [chuckles] So, I take it with a bit of a pinch of salt that she might well have been sick, but I think there’s also a good motivation for her to also have this opportunity to go on holiday with her partner, with her girlfriend. 

Ann: This reminds me of, I’m just trying to contextualize this for myself, but in some places, actually, I don’t know what the situation is in England, but in the United States where cannabis is legal, but only with a doctor’s prescription, so people get various like, whatever, various health conditions that you go to your doctor would be like, “Oh, I have anxiety,” and the doctor’s like, “Great, here’s your cannabis prescription.” Like, it’s the sort of thing where you have to kind of like have a doctor sign off on it, but they don’t give you a full exam. So, for the doctor to say, “Anne Lister needs to go to Scarborough,” it’s not like… 

Kit: This is more like Anne just really wants to go on holiday with Eliza, but her mom won’t take her unless the doctor says, “This is a really good idea. You should do that.”

Sarah: Yeah, basically.

Ann: Exactly. Exactly. 

Sarah: Yeah. That’s the reading that I have of the situation. [laughs] 

Ann: And so much of what we know about her is from her own diary. Do we know how this relationship was being understood by other people at the time? I’m just curious to know, these, like, teenage lesbians, in a time when there was very strong female friendship, did people see them as just another example of, like, very strong female friends? Or did people see what was going on? Or do you know? 

Sarah: I’m not so sure about with Eliza and Lister. I mean, we do have bits of Eliza’s journal from this period, and we also have correspondence between them. We also have correspondence between Eliza and Lister’s mother, and the way that, so like, one of the ways that I know that Eliza went on that trip is because of a letter that she sends to Rebecca Lister where she says, “Yes, I will come along with you. I’m very happy to go along with you.” The way that she describes her relationship with Lister to Lister’s mom is really, I mean, if we’re looking at Eliza’s writing style, she can be quite flamboyant, she can be quite dramatic at times. And the way that, yeah, she talks about her connection with Lister is quite, I think probably from her mom’s perspective, it might be considered a bit more than just friendship. 

Ann: Mm-hm. So, they go on this trip to Scarborough, and then how does this… Well, you said that the relationship doesn’t end well for Eliza? What happens between these two? 

Sarah: So, a couple of years later… So, they’ve not seen each other as much over the last couple of years because Lister’s not in York anymore, she’s sort of travelling around a little bit. Eliza is travelling around as well. We don’t know exactly when Lister met Mariana Lawton, well, Mariana Belcombe at that point, but she becomes friends with Isabella Norcliffe or Tib as she’s known in the TV show. Eliza introduces Lister to Tib, and then Tib introduces Lister to Mariana Belcombe. And it’s at this point that Eliza starts to feel pushed out; she doesn’t feel like they’re in as close a relationship anymore. She calls Lister “Wellie” in the letters; that’s her nickname for her (a lot of Lister’s partners have nicknames for her). But that is around the time that their relationship, I think it had already been becoming a bit more distant around that point anyway, but that is really where you get a bit of jealousy, and yeah, just breaking off, and then she’s going and pursuing Tib, and she’s going and pursuing Mariana Lawton at that point. 

Ann: Actually, I have a question because I think I came across this a bit when I was reading up. What was Anne Lister’s type? It’s like, kind of conventionally feminine women, is that correct? 

Sarah: I’d say so. There’s a couple of things where some of the ways that she describes the women that she likes is quite… We’d consider it quite misogynistic now. I think she did like women that challenged her, but not too much. So, she liked women that were intelligent, but not more intelligent than her. She liked to feel that she was impressing them with her knowledge. But yeah, I think that’s kind of consistent. 

Kit: There’s a bit of a mansplainer, I guess. 

Sarah: A little bit, yeah. But then there are instances, I think, where Eliza in her letters to Lister is saying like, “Oh, please explain this to me.” So, it is them sort of being quite enamoured by her intelligence and wanting to learn from her. And I think she just really likes being able to teach people. 

Ann: Can we talk about, and maybe this is a question for you, Kit as well, is Anne Lister’s physical presentation; how she would dress, how she did her hair, and how she wasn’t blending in basically, right? 

Kit: Yeah, absolutely. This is one of the aspects of Anne’s what I call kind of ambivalence about gender. She becomes known for dressing kind of mostly in black, which is very much how men dress, not how women dress, and in a more masculine style and not conforming to norms of femininity of that period. And I suppose I think that in the kind of 18th, early 19th century paradigm of sexuality, that like, she’s understanding herself, and that is a part of attraction to women is being more masculine. That’s kind of what it means to be attracted to femme women, is that she presents and understands herself in a more masculine way. Yeah, I don’t know if you want to add anything, Sarah.

Sarah: I know there’s a bit where… And again, I’m going back to Scarborough. [laughs] There’s a little instance where it’s a couple of days before she and her mother set off to go to York, and she decides to go and get a new pair of shoes for this holiday. I’ve forgotten what they’re called, but she tries to get these, sort of, military-style half shoes, like half boots. I think of that as being quite compelling, because it is almost like this in-between between a boot and a shoe, which the boots being a very masculine shoe, and then slippers being a much more feminine shoe that women were wearing. It’s a lot harder to walk around in a slipper, because it would usually be made of things like silk. But I think it’s interesting that we are when she’s on her way to Scarborough, she contemplates buying these shoes that are in of themselves and the way that they’re structured, kind of playing with gender a little bit. 

Ann: That’s so perfect. That’s so perfect that she’s just like, “I’m not a slipper. I’m not a boot. I’m kind of this other, third…” 

Sarah: Yeah. But then she does start wearing boots later on. 

Kit: I mean, apart from anything else, she walks really long distances, right? Like, you need a boot. 

Ann: Just practically, yeah. Well, and this is where I really want to, just to really understand, in the context of this society she’s living in, do you think it’s because she is… I don’t know, I know that the class system is like very, I don’t fully understand it, but I know it’s very part of British society and has always been. Is she an upper-class person? Or is she like a middle-class person? 

Sarah: She’s landed gentry, so I’d say sort of somewhere between middle class and upper class.

Kit: She’s upper middle class, which, I don’t know if that would make sense to a North American audience. But it’s the point you’re making, Ann, that class privilege is partly what allows her to get away with this. 

Ann: That’s what I was leading to. Is she able to express herself in this way because she has some societal advantages in a way that someone lower class than her maybe wouldn’t have been able to? Like, the fact that she’s able to do this and get away with it, and no one’s like… She’s not being ostracized, clearly. Or is she? 

Kit: Well, she is. 

Sarah: She is.

Ann: Oh! Okay.

Sarah: And there’s instances where she gets, even by partners, she gets quite horribly, I think it’s quite horrible, quite horribly rejected for her presentation. And there’s a bit, again, we’re back in Scarborough—it’s a different Scarborough trip, it’s later in her life, it’s in the 1820s. 

Ann: She just likes to go to Scarborough, you know? That’s her spot.

Sarah: She only went there a couple of times, but I’m just focusing on it. She goes back to Scarborough with Mariana now Lawton, so she’s married to Charles Lawton at this point, and she just kind of rejects Anne because of her unfashionable dress, and the fact that she’s starting to get, because I think she’s in her sort of like, late twenties, early thirties at this point, she’s starting to get facial hair a little bit on her chin, and, like, her whiskers. And Mariana just kind of treats her like, “Oh, I don’t want to be seen with you in public.” And Anne is really deeply hurt by it. 

Ann: So, she’s becoming more… I don’t know if it’s necessarily masculine presenting, but just more, like, she’s wearing black, and then eventually it’s like, now she’s wearing boots, and now it’s like, she’s got whiskers. Like, she’s becoming more… I don’t know, she’s standing out more as she gets older, somehow. Is that true? 

Sarah: I think it fluctuates because I think there’s also a point where she starts to femme it up a little bit. I’m no fashion historian, but I know that there’s a point where she does start to femme it up a little bit more, and that’s just so that she’ll be treated a bit more nicely. And also, when we get into, like, the late 1820s, early 1830s, when she’s really starting to try and get in with these different members of the aristocracy, they do see her as a bit of an oddity and a bit unique. But there’s that sort of fine line between like, ”Oh, isn’t this funny? Isn’t she queer? Isn’t she a bit funny? But also having to conform to their gender expectations. And there’s only so far that you can go with that before you’ll be ostracized completely. 

Ann: So, I’m just thinking. We’re talking about how she— Actually, can we pivot? We’re going to get back into relationships, obviously, but the whole, like, landowner thing. So, you were saying that she, in order to be sort of accepted in certain echelons, she was kind of like, becoming a bit more femme a little bit. But at what point does she inherit the property and become a landowner? 

Sarah: 1826. 

Kit: So, that would make her in her thirties, early thirties. Yeah. 

Ann: And it’s this property where the diaries were found, Shibden Hall? 

Sarah: Yeah, Shibden Hall. Yeah, it’s just outside of Halifax in Yorkshire. 

Kit: Yeah, so it’s quite a substantial manor house, parkland, and she owns some various bits of land along with that, which she can exploit for mining purposes, right? 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Ann: Actually, okay, we’re going to talk about the landowning, and we’re going to talk about the problematic fave-ness of how— What does she do with this property and money? And how is she getting her income? 

Sarah: So, she inherited tenants from her uncle, so there were already people who were renting properties owned by the Listers on Shibden’s land and also sort of around Halifax. So, she takes on those tenancies when he dies. She also, yeah, just starts getting involved in different enterprises in Halifax. And this is, I think, quite a major plot point in the TV show is that she learns that her neighbours, the Rawsons, who she knew when she was younger, she was quite close with different members of the Rawsons, particularly the women at different points in her younger life— Not in a, not that I remember, I don’t think there’s any intimacies between her and the Rawsons except maybe flirtation. But at this later point, she learns that the men in the Rawson family are exploiting her coal beds. And so, she’s given this advice to… 

Ann: What? Oh, her coal, like, her mines? 

Sarah: Yeah. So, they’re not being mined actively, but they’re coal beds that I think previously had been mined, like, a slightly earlier generation of the Lister family, but not in her lifetime, I don’t believe. But it suggested that she start having people mine her coal so that they can keep it, so that she can actually get some money out of it, and also, so that they’re not continuing to be exploited by their neighbours. So, she really goes quite all in on this, and that’s sort of, yeah, late 1820s, early 1830s, that that starts to happen. 

Kit: And she’s a quite early investor in railway shares as well, isn’t she? Because the railways are getting going in Britain around this time. 1825, you get the first passenger railway, and Yorkshire is one of the first places where they start building up. So yeah, that’s another big source of income. 

Ann: If this was like a cis man we were talking about, this would just be like, very par for the course, expected behaviour of somebody who inherited this property and now they’re overseeing the mines, they’re getting shares in railways. Like, this is kind of typical behaviour for a landowner, would you say? 

Sarah: I think so, yeah. 

Ann: Which just becomes exceptional because of who she is, and that it’s not a cis man doing this. 

Sarah: Yeah. I mean, there were other women who were taking on property after family members had died. I think the thing that is seen as exceptional about Lister is just how much she’s involved and the fact that she’s not delegating to other people. It’s the fact that she is very actively getting herself involved in the business of it all. She’s overseeing, and she’s… Not that she’s just overseeing it, but the fact that she’s really invested and she’s very interested in her own business as well. 

Ann: To me, I can see that that would pair up with her trait that you talked about before, of liking to explain things to people and stuff. She’s clearly somebody who thinks a lot of her own abilities, so I could see that if she’s involved, she thinks, “Well, I need to have my fingers and everything because I’m the smart one here. I’m the one who knows what to do.” And I don’t mean this in a negative way at all, I’m just trying to form a picture of what she’s like as a person. And it’s like, of course! In her personal life and also in this business life, she would want to be kind of in charge of things. That just seems to be what she’s about. 

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. And after she leaves the King’s Manor, she is very invested in continuing her education, and she does this through… I know that there’s a trend at the moment for people making their own curriculums at home for, sort of like, the autumn semester, if they’re out of academia. But she has this, she creates her own curriculum for herself; she has local tutors come and tutor her on a variety of different topics; she goes to lectures that are held in Halifax. 

I think when we’re thinking about exceptionality, there were other women that were doing this, there were other women that were attending these lectures and learning about these things. I think a really great example of a peer of Lister’s that in a more general sense that we can think of as having similar traits to her is her friend, Frances Pickford, who lived in Bath and in the Bristol area, that she identified with, but also would often kind of try and distance herself from because of their similarities and particularly because of Frances Pickford’s more overt masculinity. And the fact that she also was living with a partner at different points in her life. 

Ann: Oh, interesting. So, in terms of the… So, she’s getting all this education. At what point does she start doing all this kind of world travelling? Well, is this before or after Ann Walker? I guess it’s before, right? She does quite a bit… 

Sarah: Oh, way before. Way before. She goes to Paris for the first time with her father and with her sister in the early 1820s, they go just the three of them. And then she goes over again, another two times to Paris with her aunt, and she lives there for quite a while. We’re looking at, like, Helena Whitbread’s editions of Lister’s journals; she was the first person to publish Lister’s journals, including the lesbian content in her journals, and the sexual content in her journals. Helena Whitbread was doing that in the late 1980s. Her second book, No Priest But Love, is about Lister’s life when she’s living in Paris. At that point, she’s living with her aunt Anne, and then at other times she’s living separately and sometimes with another woman called Maria Barlow and her daughter. 

Ann: And is that another romantic interest, Maria Barlow? 

Sarah: Oh yeah! [Ann and Sarah chuckle] If we think about… I don’t want to try and frame it too much around Gentleman Jack or the TV film, but I know that it’s a good shortcut for people and a media touchstone. Maria Barlow, we only see for, like, maybe three seconds in one of the first episodes of the show, and it’s just performing oral sex on her, and her orgasming, and then it cuts away. That’s all we ever see of Maria Barlow. [laughs] I’m assuming that it’s Maria Barlow because it’s meant to be that she’s in Paris and she’s having sex with this woman. I’m like, it’s probably Maria Barlow. 

Ann: So, in terms of her, I don’t know how much this is like a— It doesn’t seem like there’s a clear delineation of this relationship ends, and then this one begins. There’s always sort of an overlap period. But we had Eliza Raine, and then she left it for Mariana. 

Sarah: I mean, it depends if we’re including everyone. [Sarah and Kit laugh] 

Ann: Okay, okay. So, there’s lots. There’s lots of paramours, there’s lots of relationships, and they’re all detailed in this diary. I don’t know if Mariana is a good example. Who would be a good example of what these relationships were like? Like, if you were in a relationship with Anne Lister, what are you up to? Are you going for walks together? Are you just secretly meeting by night? What is the relationship? 

Sarah: I mean, I think each of her relationships is quite different, and it’s just because she’s at different points in her life. I think what we think of as, like, the core relationships, and the ones that she is actively pursuing them in a romantic way as well as a sexual way, a lot of them were conducted long distance, like, very lesbian stereotype. [Ann laughs] 

So, I mean, her first relationship, Eliza Raine, they start at school, and then, a lot of their relationship is conducted via correspondence. And then the same happens a little bit with Isabella Norcliffe, but they’re seeing each other relatively often, and they’re corresponding a lot. And Mariana, again, it’s kind of, there’s a fluctuation between them sort of having these instances where they’re meeting up. I think, again, my research is about Lister’s travel motivations and her mobility around the UK, and a lot of that I think is motivated by, she does a lot of her travel to go and see the women that she’s interested in. She’s motivated to go to those places so that she gets the chance to meet up with them, even if, I mean, there are so many instances of Mariana’s travelling somewhere else and Anne will meet her at a stop in the middle, and they’ll have a little tryst and then Mariana will carry on to go do something with her husband. 

Ann: Oh, so sorry. Mariana has a husband? 

Sarah: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, she marries in 1816, March 1816. And I think it’s pertinent that— So, Lister’s journal, for the most part, is very, very consistent. From 1806, we have the loose-leaf journals; I call them the pre-journals, I know that other Lister scholars call them her juvenilia, which I think is pretty accurate. They go from 1806 to 1814. We then have a big old gap between 1814 and August 1816. And then, from there on, we get most of her life until that last missing months when she’s in Kutaisi at the end. 

There is a fair amount of evidence, I know Jill Liddington’s written about this, that basically Lister probably, there’s a high chance that Lister burned or destroyed that bit of the journal when she’s in her most committed part of her relationship with Mariana. So, when they’re actually sort of together before Mariana is married, we don’t have. We just have the remaining correspondence; we don’t actually have the journal entries for that period. 

Ann: Do we know… I’m just a nosy gossip. What does her husband think of all of this? Does he know about all of this? [laughs]

Sarah: He definitely does because he finds a letter from Anne basically saying to Mariana, like, “Just wait until Charles dies, and then we’ll be together.” [Ann laughs] I’m paraphrasing there, but she’s basically saying, “Let’s just wait till Charles dies, and then we’ll be happy.” He sees that letter, and it impacts the way that… I think there’s a period where Anne’s letters don’t get through to Mariana, or Mariana’s letters don’t get back to Anne. So, there’s a bit where they’re not corresponding very much, and that’s because of the husband’s sort of repression of that communication. 

There are, again, and I think this is something that I’ll always say about Lister is that she’s very contradictory over the course of her life. And I think it is such a gift that we have so much of her life recorded, so you can see where she changes her mind, where her ideas evolve. So, she’s not, I don’t think we can really talk about Lister in a super consistent way or say “She was X” or “She was this” because she changes so much. And… I’ve forgotten the point that I was going to make, I’m really sorry. 

Ann: Well, no, I just have another question, and maybe this is for Kit. Just in terms of, so if the husband finding this letter, and I mean, I guess if anyone saw a letter being like, “Once your husband is dead, we’ll be together,” you’d be like, “Oh, okay. What’s happening?” 

But in terms of like an understanding of lesbian relationships in the early 1800s, because I know there’s sodomy laws and stuff, but that’s very much based on men, right? Like, there’s not… Is this the time period where there’s not really a law against being a lesbian? Because people are like, “Well, if there’s no penis, then it’s not sex, so who cares?” Is that this era? 

Kit: Kind of, yeah. And I mean, the laws are, but yeah, partly about what counts as sex, but partly also, I suppose, about what are the consequences of relationships. You know, the Buggery law has always, in England, and I think everywhere, partly been about the social consequences that can result from two men having an intimate relationship. Because if someone has… You know, men are people who can have political power, and therefore, if someone can inveigle their way into their intimacy sexually, that influences the way they dispense that political power. Whereas women, the assumption is, they don’t have political or financial influence, therefore it’s of less consequence what they’re getting up to sexually or romantically. 

Anne Lister is obviously an outlier in having some economic and political power, but I don’t think that’s really Charles Lawton’s objection that like, that’s going to affect the way that she deploys that. There is enough erotica out at this time that means that, like, people can have a pretty good idea of what women can do sexually. It’s very skewed towards penetrative sex still, but I think the idea that two women could have a sexually satisfying relationship is something that would have been available to Charles and therefore is making him angry when he realizes that that is what his wife is getting from Anne. I think that’s fair to say. 

Sarah: Yeah, I think it’s very much an issue of cuckoldry, really, that he feels like he’s being made a cuckold of, despite the fact that he himself is also having extramarital affairs. 

Ann: Oh, of course, naturally. 

Sarah: And siring, like, having children with other women. I think he has a son with a servant, something like that. But obviously, he’s held to a different standard than Mariana is, than Lister is. 

Ann: On the same topic… My previous season of this podcast, we were talking about Marie Antoinette, and there was so much, various people, lots of pamphlets, demonizing her in various ways. And one of them was saying, like, “She’s a lesbian, and that is dangerous and unnatural and German.” So, at that period of time, and there’s these very detailed, erotic pamphlets talking about how Marie Antoinette is having these relationships with her female favourites. And so, lesbianism was understood as being a threat to society. Was that the case in England at this time as well? Do you know? 

Kit: In that it is a disruption to patriarchal social reproduction, yeah, absolutely. If the women are having sex for fun rather than for babies, if the women are being distracted from what is considered to be their natural place in society, then yes, absolutely. Yeah, I don’t know if, Sarah, you have some more specific stuff to say about Anne Lister? 

Sarah: I was going to say, she references Marie Antoinette quite specifically. So, again, returning to the idea of terminology, like, what language do we use to describe Lister? Can we call her a lesbian? So, she did have the word ‘sapphic’ or ‘sapphist,’ and she, I don’t remember what year it is, but there’s an instance where Maria Barlow is asking her about it, this is when they’re living in Paris, and so they have this conversation about sapphic love or desire, and Lister says, “Oh, no. I’m not sapphic.” And she says that it’s because she associates it with artifice, and specifically with penetration and this idea of lesbian sex for the pleasure of men. So, she talks about it in that framing. But yeah, so she rejects the term ‘sapphic’ because of this connotation with Marie Antoinette. 

Ann: Well, I mean, you brought it up, so I’m just going to follow what you just said, because Anne Lister’s diaries are very specific. Can you talk about what sex acts she was getting up to? Because there was not penetration, right? Or there was not toys or…? You tell me. [laughs] You’ve done so much more research. 

Sarah: I don’t think that there’s… This is me working my brain now, I don’t think there’s ever… Yeah, I don’t think she uses toys, but she does have very specific language and different terminology that she uses to describe different sex acts. So, she says, I think the most common one is “having a kiss,” and she’s not talking about a kiss on the mouth. I think “having a kiss” is rubbing externally on the vulva and causing friction, like frottage, on the surface of the vulva, on the outside of the vulva. And then she also describes ‘grubbling,’ which is then going a bit deeper. And then, she also… I mean, we can come to the blanket at some point from earlier at this point. There’s a bit where she describes fingering a partner and feeling the stones of… I think it’s the stones of Arania or Anania or something, but she’s also putting her fingers up into her partner and penetrating them that way. 

Ann: You mentioned the blanket. Before we were recording, Sarah was showing us… Actually, you know what? We have this video. You have three Anne Lister-based objects in your vicinity.

Sarah: Yes, I do. [laughs] 

Ann: Can you show… The blanket will be the finale. So, you’ve got a mug, you’ve got a shirt. Yeah. 

Sarah: So, to start with, the jumper that I’m wearing says, “A little bit of chaos,” and that’s in Anne Lister’s handwriting. I also have [laughs], and this is in her crypt hand, so it’s completely illegible. It starts here, and it says, this is a direct quote from Lister, it says, “I am the best doctor,” and I was given this after I finished my PhD. 

But then also, before my partner and I got together, when we were flirting with each other, she was very kind and made me this delightful blanket. On it, it’s all in crypt hand, and it’s all a page from Lister’s journal where she’s being intimate and grubbling, and putting her fingers inside a Miss Mary Vallance. So yeah, it’s just a whole fleece blanket, just with smut from Lister’s journal on a page. [laughs] 

Ann: It’s delightful. 

Kit: This is the best meet-cute I’ve ever heard, by the way, like flirting with someone with Anne Lister smut. [Sarah laughs]

Ann: It’s beautiful. And also, a good example for the listeners to show this is what the crypt hand looks like, this is what people are deciphering. To me, it’s just… I would have no idea. Yeah, it just looks like random symbols. But to people who, once you crack the code… 

So, she’s having these sexual relationships. She’s being a landowner. She’s got these coal mines. I don’t know if this… Again, you both know the story much better than I do, but if this could lead to her ideas about marriage, because to be a land-owning man, usually, if you’re a cis man, you would marry some heiress or something to combine your fortunes, to get a bit more money. What were her thoughts about marriage? At this point, legally, if she was going to get married, it would have to be to a man, and I don’t sense that was ever an option that she considered. 

Kit: Yeah, I don’t think marriage to a man was ever on the cards. I think this is another place where Anne Lister as problematic fave really comes to the fore. She considered a kind of religious quasi-marriage ceremony with Mariana, to my knowledge. They considered going to church and kind of sharing Holy Communion together as a marriage ceremony. And then that was something she actually did with Ann Walker. There are romantic and financial motivations for this, I think, it’s probably fair to say. It is something that’s really important to her. You know, she writes in her diary that the first time she ever held Ann Walker, she hoped that they would be together forever. I’m paraphrasing. There are romantic motivations, but it is undeniable that Ann Walker also had a lot of money. And I don’t know whether, Sarah, you want to contextualize or talk a bit more about that? 

Sarah: I mean, coming back to Mariana for a second, they did exchange rings, and there are multiple partners that Lister has who describe her as their husband. Eliza, right at the start, describes Lister as her husband; Mariana describes her as her husband; and I think Ann does at some point, I think she says it to Lister, and then she writes it in the journal. She never describes Lister as her husband in her journal, personally, but there is that sentiment between them. Yeah, she took those relationships quite seriously. But as we said, consistently, she’s also having relationships with other women whilst she’s in these relationships, and I think that was because she wasn’t constrained by religious or legal marriage. She was able to look outside of the relationship because she wasn’t constrained in the same way. 

Ann: Although I will say, like, with the example of Mariana’s husband, men weren’t either. So, Anne Lister in that way was… You have your primary relationship, and then you have your other mistresses. So, maybe just emulating how men would… Yeah. 

Sarah: Yes, absolutely. She really is emulating that differentiation between wives and mistresses. And Maria Barlow definitely describes herself as being like a mistress to Lister, and that being their relationship, because she’s aware of Mariana, and I don’t know whether she’s fully aware of the extent of their relationship, but she feels like a mistress. And I think the same… Again, I could be wrong here, but I think the same is equivalent with Mary Vallance as well in the 1820s. The relationship with Ann Walker is probably the bit of her journals that I know the least. My engagement is more early journals, 1820s. I will say, from what I’ve – and I’ve read quite a lot of the different texts that go over that part of her life, the late 1820s and 1830s and her relationship with Ann Walker – there is still a lot of love there. 

I think there have been some texts that have come out, some literature that’s come out that de-emphasizes the love and affection between them and the fact that there was… I know that some people have said like, “Oh, it wasn’t the same kind of love as what she had with Mariana.” I know that you asked at the beginning about my work with fandom and the Lister fan community and enthusiast community. I think that’s something that doesn’t just come through with the enthusiast community but does also come through with Lister researchers, is that we all have our favourite, like, partner of Lister’s, as the way that we understand our relationship with her, I think, can be a little bit… I don’t think biased is the right word, but I think it can be our position, and our interpretation of those relationships might change if there’s a different relationship that we are prioritizing in our research. 

Ann: So, Ann Walker is the person, and this is where I really want to get Kit’s point of view on this, because there is some sort of church ceremony that has been commemorated with a plaque. Can you explain your work with that, but also your understanding of what this church ceremony was? 

Kit: Yeah, I think in context of the meaning that it had to Anne and Ann and the romantic nature of their relationship, I think it’s fair to call it a marriage, in context. They exchanged rings, and they stayed behind after the church service to share Holy Communion together, which is what they would have done if they were, like, having a church wedding. It’s contextualized in Anne Lister’s diaries as something that is about them being together forever. It’s not monogamy, as Sarah said, but it is romantic. 

I think, yeah, it’s a great point you make, Sarah, that there’s a very kind of ideologically romantic narrative that says, oh, you know, Anne Lister’s first love was her greatest love; she couldn’t have Mariana, so Ann Walker was a consolation prize. I don’t think, on the basis of what we know about their relationship, that that’s a fair spin to put on it. It makes a good TV narrative, maybe, but it doesn’t reflect the messiness of people’s lives. People can fall in love with more than one person, and I think it’s really clear that Anne Lister did. 

Ann: And so, the plaque. The drama of the plaque, and also the meaning of the plaque to people. I just remember from your book, Kit, you talked about you were involved in the wording of it or something like that? 

Kit: Yeah, okay. Let’s give it a bit of context on this. So, the background is that the church where Anne and Ann had their what you could call a marriage is in Holy Trinity, Goodramgate in York. It’s this lovely little tucked-away church off one of York’s lovely little narrow streets in the Minster Quarter. When I lived in York, I was involved in the charity York LGBT History Month, and with a friend and academic, Helen Graham, we started a DIY rainbow plaques project where people would make cardboard plaques to commemorate places that they thought were significant to queer history in York. We ran this over several years, and one of the places that came up year after year was people really wanted to commemorate this place where Anne and Ann had had what could be counted as York’s first lesbian marriage. 

That meant that when the possibility was raised of having a permanent rainbow plaque in York, that was the place that people were really, really keen to focus on. Now, the process by which we worked on this plaque, there were various organizations involved. Helen Graham, as an academic with an interest in heritage, was involved independently. I was involved from York LGBT History Month, there was also the Churches Conservation Trust, who owns Holy Trinity, and there was York LGBT Forum, which is a big peer support and advocacy queer group in the city. So, we all worked together, and we all had our own little agendas for how we wanted to do it. For the Churches Conservation Trust, they wanted to bring tourism in; for the York Civic Trust, who were organizing the plaque, had slightly different priorities; the LGBT Forum had different priorities again. But what none of us really had was a great link to specifically lesbian organizations in the city, or, I think, a sense of the national and international significance of the plaque that we were trying to put up. So, we held consultations, and we held consultation events and online surveys, but we didn’t really reach all of the right people. 

In part, that was because of the specific context in York, where, actually, most of the queer organizations that were involved in the plaque committee were trans-led. And most of the lesbian organizations, even though their members weren’t necessarily transphobic, they were transphobic lesbian-led. So, we weren’t getting our message through because of the specific people involved. There was also one of the organizations who was keen to do it on a specific deadline, that I think wasn’t the right decision in the end. It meant that the process was rushed. 

So, ended up getting the impression from the consultation we did that what was most important to people was pointing out, this is gender nonconformity, and pointing out that it was a marriage, although the Church was then like, “You can’t say marriage,” so we ended up with this unwieldy phrase, [through laughter] “Celebrated marital commitment without legal recognition,” and people were really keen on Anne Lister as a kind of women in business icon, like, Anne Lister girlboss. So, we ended up with this mishmash of all those things. We unveiled the plaque, at really, I think, the very beginning of the kind of trans culture wars that we have today. This was 2017, I think. So yeah, it was really… It was a surprise to all of us, I think, that our description of Anne Lister’s behaviour as gender nonconforming was taken as claiming Anne Lister for the trans side and not the lesbian side. I think it was naive of us to not see that coming, and I think it was naive of us to not see Anne Lister as a lesbian figure from lesbian history was really important to lesbians. But I also think that, yeah, the way that the plaque was read and spun was a product of the very beginnings of that transphobic culture war in the UK. 

If this was happening to me now, I would, I think, be able to try and negotiate what happened afterwards in a way that meant that the reworded plaque we ended up with spoke to Anne’s lesbian history and trans history. But the position I was in, it was the first time I’d really had a substantial amount of transphobic online hate, and I was so completely blindsided by that that I wasn’t really able to take an active part in the discussions for the reworded plaque that happened afterwards. And despite a few people trying to get me to, I really wasn’t in a place where I could do that. 

So, the plaque we have now calls Anne a lesbian, which is also a term I didn’t use, and doesn’t say anything about gender nonconformity, and did rephrase the stuff about marriage in a way that I think works better. It now says, “Took sacrament to seal her union,” and goes with diarist instead of entrepreneur girl boss. There are pros and cons to all of those decisions, but I do think that the replacement of ‘gender nonconforming’ with ‘lesbian’ is still not something that reflects Anne’s totality perfectly. Instead, what we have is a plaque that sort of continues to reflect the wrangling over Anne’s legacy, and the desire for different groups to see themselves in her, rather than a plaque that reflects Anne fully, I would say. 

Ann: It’s such a complex thing to try and take somebody’s totality into a plaque that I’m sure has a certain letter count or a word count. So, in terms of the plaque itself, like, you described as the rainbow plaque. So, it’s similar to the blue plaques that are all over the UK, right? That’s just like, “This person lived in this house,” whatever. So, it’s like that, but it’s got the rainbow so it’ll make it easier for people to find the church who want to make a pilgrimage. I guess they’ll notice it. 

Kit: Yeah. Well, you still have to go through the gateway to see it. 

Ann: Oh, okay. So, not even that… [laughs]

Kit: It was the UK’s first rainbow plaque, which is now a thing that there are more of across the UK. So, that remains something I’m proud of. It’s a blue plaque, but it’s visibly queer history. You can’t ignore the fact that a queer person was here and is being given the same validation as other kinds of heritage, and I do think that’s really important.

Ann: And from your work, Sarah, what have you found about the importance of people visiting this site in terms of Anne Lister fans and tourism and things? I would imagine this is, like, site number one, if someone’s doing an Anne Lister pilgrimage. 

Sarah: Yeah, it’s either site number one or site number two after Shibden Hall. I mean, the topic of my PhD thesis, it was partly, where’s Anne going? What’s Anne interested in? And then the other part was, what are Lister enthusiasts interested in? Where are they going? What locations are important to them in relation to Anne? But also, where else are they going because of Anne? But yeah, this is probably, I would say, the majority of people that I spoke to, because I did 40 interviews as part of my work, I think everyone had been to Shibden Hall at least once, and I think probably about 75 to 80% had been to Holy Trinity as well. 

So, that was a really, really key point and it was the first, I think it was… Yeah, both of them are just such important places because it is, I don’t know, if we think about it in terms of sort of, in a more sort of homonormative continuum, we sort of have Shibden Hall as the place that she lived, Halifax Minster in Halifax, where she was christened, and somewhere in Halifax Minster she’s buried. But then we also have the place where she took vows and was married, which is Holy Trinity Church. So, those are sort of three really, really key places, and then I was interested in like, okay, well, where else are people interested in going? Why are they going there? What about those other locations? Are they being drawn to those places because of Lister? 

Ann: Can we talk— Well, I mean, in terms of other places, when she and Ann Walker were married, they travelled together to various places. Both, I would… I don’t know, I keep saying things, and I’m like, “Well, you tell me.” But I know for sure that, like, they ended, she died in Georgia, so they were obviously in continental Europe. But what other places did you come across in your research that people like to visit? Were those places that Anne and Ann travelled to? 

Sarah: I mean, in my work, I was mostly— I mean, I’d love to do another project looking at people’s travels on mainland Europe. I was mostly looking at their travels within Britain, because a lot of enthusiasts who were travelling to go to Lister locations, some of them were Brits themselves, but a lot were coming from around the globe. So, they would generally, as their first port of call, they would go to England first; they would go to Shibden, they would go to Holy Trinity, they would go to Halifax Minster. 

But in terms of her continental travel, oh my gosh, pretty much, like, almost everywhere. Not everywhere, but a lot of different nations; she went all over Scandinavia, she went to Poland, she went to France multiple times. It’s more, I think, really, with Lister, it’s more of a case of where didn’t she go, rather than where she did go. Because even if she isn’t spending much time there, she’s travelling through a lot of different countries. And obviously, how we understand those countries now, some of them have changed their names, some of them, their borders have changed since the 1820s, 1830s. But yeah, she was a prolific traveller, and both by herself, with other people. This is the thing, she never really travelled by herself, because she had her servants with her. [laughs]

Ann: Never forget, never forget. She’s a wealthy person. 

Sarah: Yeah, exactly. But yeah, she’s travelling all over. And she’s, I mean, not breaking records, but she’s being the first to do things. I can’t remember which mountain it is. 

Ann: I was going to say, she did, like, mountain climbing and stuff. She wasn’t just travelling around to— Well, like you mentioned, Kit, with the boots, like she’s walking. Her travels are very active trips, seemingly. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Ann: When you’re talking about breaking records, too, part of this would be, like, given her gender nonconformity, and how would she define herself? But like, a lot of these things are like the first English woman to whatever, I would imagine these are the sorts of records she’s breaking, or creating, I guess. 

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. I was just trying to find out which mountain it is. I think it’s Vinyamala; she is the first person to ascend Vinyamala. And there was a European prince who tried to lie to official record keepers and say that he got there first, and actually she’d gotten there, I think it was like a day before. And she made the point, she was like, “No. I was the first person to do this. Just because you’re a prince doesn’t mean that you get to mosey in there and say that you got there first.” And she makes a real point of going and saying, “Actually, no, this was me. This is my guide. He and I went up there, and we got there first.” 

Ann: So, not even the first… That was me just being naive, like assuming she’s the first woman. No, she’s the first person to do some of these things, yeah! 

So, she and Ann Walker, they’re together— Do you know? Of course, you know. How long were they together? From their commitment ceremony until Anne Lister died; that relationship stuck, right? They never separated. 

Kit: Yeah. 1834, they get married. I mean, they’re together before that. But yeah, then 1840, Anne dies. 

Sarah: So, I think they start their relationship late 1832, and then there’s bits where each of them goes off for a bit, and they’ll go travelling without the other. And then they come together, and then they have their, and they commit to each other in 1834. But they don’t celebrate their anniversary on the day that they took the sacrament together. They celebrate their anniversary on a different day. Yeah, it’s a kind of cake that they have that they make on that specific day. But yeah, it’s not the day that they take the sacrament together, it’s a different day. 

Ann: And so, I just did some preparations for this conversation. And one of the descriptions, I forget who said it, of Anne Lister. They’re like, “So she died, she was 49. I couldn’t imagine what she didn’t accomplish in her life that she wanted to.” Like, the 49 years were full of just, like, so much travel, like you were saying, the self-guided education stuff. In terms of a life fulfilled, it seems like she kind of did everything she wanted to. 

Sarah: I think she did want to publish some of her writing. She really, she definitely did. And I think specifically, she wanted to publish her travel writing. She had thought of using different pseudonyms, because this is still a point where some women are starting to publish under their own names, but there’s a lot who still aren’t. And I think she was quite mindful about that, and what the impact might be of her doing that would be, if she was publishing that during her lifetime. 

But yes, she was practicing writing up her travels; she was writing separately from her main journal in travel notes, in specific travel journals, and what she notes down there is, obviously, there’s crossover between what she includes in the journal, but it is distinct. And it is written in a specific voice and a specific style. You can see that she’s really starting to think about how she might do that. 

Ann: Well, and I’ve come across this so many other times in my recent research for this podcast; a wealthy person travels, and then after they come back, they’re like, “My trip to Italy.” Like, I can understand the sort of writing that this would have been. This is the thing that people would just kind of do. 

Sarah: I think the interesting thing is that, like, some of her earliest travel writing is very much itinerary writing. So, she is being very, like, really specifically descriptive of, “If you go down this road, you will see on your right, you will see on your left.” She’s uber uber specific. I mean, it’s— 

Ann: A real sort of, like, Lonely Planet travel guide sort of thing. 

Sarah: Kind of, yeah. Absolutely. And I mean, she’s really utilizing the skills that she’s built from being such a regular journal writer is that she is able to just be so meticulous, and she writes in, like, little notebooks in pencil while she’s travelling so she can still make these observations, but then she goes and writes it up at the end of the day in a more formal way. 

Ann: Well, that’s interesting you say that that was— I’m not surprised to hear that that was one of her goals, given how much I think anyone who writes this many diaries and journals, obviously, I think wants to publish at some point. But I mean, who could have imagined that her diaries would be published and would become… Like, she’s now, I think, when I was researching my book about the Regency era, I was just like, “I bet Anne Lister…” [laughs] She wrote about everything, like, she’s just such a key diarist of this whole time period.

If you want to know what was the word on the street, what did people know about whatever topic? Because she lived through so many major historical events, like, in England in the early 1800s, there’s so much happening, there’s riots, there’s so much is going on. So, just to get, sort of, what was… Not that she’s an average person, but in the context of a diary, just like, a person, what was she thinking? 

And that brings us to, I think I’m going to call this part of my podcast, Caroline’s Corner, where we talk about how does this person intersect with Caroline of Brunswick, the topic of my book, Rebel of the Regency. And I was really excited, actually, and a little disappointed personally, that I hadn’t met you before, Sarah, before I finished my final draft of the book, because I did find a couple quotes from—

Sarah: Sorry.

Ann: No, no, but I’m excited. I found a couple quotes from Anne Lister about Caroline of Brunswick when I was researching, because I was like, “Anne Lister must have written something, she was documenting everything.” And I found a couple quotes that was mostly to me, it came across as Anne Lister just being like, I can’t, like people who are obsessed with Love Island or something, Anne Lister just writing like, “Everyone’s talking about this, including me, I wish I wasn’t.” But this is, she’s like, “I can’t stop reading this. This is such exciting, trashy news,” like about Caroline of Brunswick and her adultery trial and stuff. So, I included those in my book because I really wanted to. But I think you found some other mentions of Caroline of Brunswick. 

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. One that I found is, again, coming back to Miss Vallance, and her and Anne Lister being intimate with each other, she actually makes a comparison between her and Miss Vallance’s relationship and Caroline of Brunswick, and I’m assuming it’s her lover, Pergami? 

Ann: Bartolomeo Pergami, her hot Italian lover, yeah. 

Sarah: Yeah. So, in her journal, she describes the sex that she’s having with Miss Vallance, to the intimacies between Caroline and Pergami, that’s her opinion from what she’s heard in the news. [laughs]

Ann: No, no, that’s amazing. Pergami was… He never came to England because he couldn’t, but he was kind of a sex symbol of the time. He was like an intensely handsome Italian man. One person described him as having “a mustache as wide as from here to Paris,” or something like that. He’s got this, like, mustache. But he’s super handsome, he’s like six-foot-five or something. And everybody in England is just like, “Yes, Caroline, get it. Like, look at this guy you’ve got.” So he was, like, a famous hot guy. 

Sarah: So interesting thinking about like, I’m like, because I was thinking like, “Who is she framing herself as in this situation?” Pergami. Clearly Pergami. 

Kit: Presumably that famous hot guy.

Ann: The hottest man in the world. She’s just being, “I’m basically Pedro Pascal in this situation” is what she’s saying. [Kit and Ann laugh] 

Sarah: I didn’t even have the context for this. I was just like, “Okay! Get it, Anne.” 

Ann: Yeah. It’s fantastic. In this time of, in England, like, there was Caroline frenzy everywhere; people were obsessed with her trial and her adultery, alleged adultery, I should say. Like Madame Tussaud was in England at this time and demand was so high, she made a wax figure of Pergami because people were so interested in this, like, hunk. They just wanted to be able to see what he looked like, in person. Yeah. 

Sarah: I now need to see if she ever went and saw, like, whether she ever saw that, whether she ever actually saw what Pergami looked like. 

Ann: I think everybody knew what Pergami looked like, there was drawings and the newspapers and everything. He was… Yeah. Famous. So, I love that! I love that just in terms of like, how does she see herself? In this situation, she’s not the Caroline, she’s the Pergami. 

Sarah: Yeah. I love that for her. 

Ann: Yeah! No, that’s fabulous. You know, if I get, if my book comes out in a paperback, maybe I can have, like, an addendum. 

Sarah: Yeah, a footnote. 

Ann: Important Anne Lister information. 

But in terms of Anne Lister, and for both of you, I think, like, how do you see her, both of you personally, but also what have you witnessed in terms of her importance just to queer history? Like, as an icon? Especially, there was a TV show, Gentleman Jack, which I think made her story even better known. I guess I’ll ask you each individually, like, what is your understanding of her as a queer icon in 2025? 

Sarah: I mean, it is, I’ve spoken to so many people about why she’s important to them. And it is on different layers, on so many different levels. The BBC made a sort of companion documentary to Gentleman Jack that was called Gentleman Jack Changed My Life, which was, yeah, sort of following all these different women and their interactions with Lister’s history and the story that’s portrayed in the TV show; some of them realizing that they’re queer in different ways, having the courage to come out to family. Just yeah, all these different myriad ways that they feel that she’s impacted their life, and that was made in like 2022, 2023. 

I think she’s an interesting one because I think that there is such a complexity around the way that we talk about Lister and the fact that there are parts of her history, of her story that are very problematic. But I also think that it’s quite easy to write her off as the bad guy. I think it’s quite easy to write her off as the bad guy. And I think, as I said earlier, like, she is complex, she is contradictory. There are things that she says at one point in her life that she then disregards at another point in her life. I think one of the things that is most commonly described about her is that she was Tory and that she voted. Well, obviously, she didn’t, she didn’t vote Tory because she couldn’t vote Tory. 

Ann: Because she was a woman, technically. 

Sarah: Yeah, but she did essentially blackmail her tenants into voting Tory for her [Ann laughs] so she kind of had more voting power than the average person. But I mean, we know from work by Susan Lanser, queer historian, that her politics changed over the course of her life. And the way that, I mean, I was looking at this earlier today, the journal entry that we have where I think it’s one of her most famous lines, which is, “I love and only love the fairer sex and thus beloved by them,” earlier in that journal entry, she describes how the way that she communicates with other people has changed over the last ten years, and the fact that she doesn’t feel that she can be as open or as romantic in her letter writing or the way that she’s talking to people from when she was ten years younger. 

So, I think with Lister, she does have such a big impact, but she is also only one person. And I think the real significance of her journals is we do learn so much about her and we learn so much about the world that she was inhabiting, and we can contextualize the world that she was living in a little bit better, but we can also use her as a springboard for all the other people around her, and we can learn about the people that she was meeting and their histories as well. And actually, this is something that I’m very interested in, is the fact that she is singular in so many ways, but in her queerness, she’s not, because she’s being intimate with all these other women, it’s not just her. Like, she’s being intimate with all of them. She’s not the only one. 

Kit: It’s not just doing it to them, right? She’s doing it with them. 

Sarah: Exactly. It’s not just something that she’s kind of forcing on them. She is part of a, even if we think of community in a different way now, there is a community of people because we can see that through her journals. And I think that’s one of the really significant things about her is how we can see this sort of spiderweb. I know that there have been a couple of researchers who’ve made, like, the lesbian charts of relationships between Anne Lister and different women. But I think things like that are, it’s funny, but it is also really important because it’s like, yeah, there were all these other women that she was being intimate with and do have this shared experience with her, just perhaps in slightly different ways. 

Kit: Yeah, I completely agree. And I think, you know, going right back to the start when we were talking about Anne Lister as “the first modern lesbian,” why are these other women also not the first modern lesbians? 

Sarah: Exactly! 

Kit: And is it something about Anne Lister’s butchness or, you know, kind of hyper visibility in the way that she refuses to conform to femininity that makes people more able to kind of single her out in a way that I think isn’t very helpful for thinking about queer history, which is so hyper individualized anyway. 

Yeah, I think the other thing I would say about Anne Lister’s importance to queer history now is that I think, if anything, where the popularity of Gentleman Jack could have given us a kind of nuanced and ambivalent portrayal of Anne Lister’s relationship to the histories of sexuality and gender, all it did was cement Anne Lister as lesbian history on his own. That is something that is both really important to queer women and really frustrating to trans people who also relate to Anne’s history

In private trans Facebook groups, you sometimes see people talking about, you know, maybe Anne Lister was actually a trans man, and I don’t think that’s right. Anne Lister wasn’t a trans man, Anne Lister didn’t say she was a trans man. But like, that’s the only spaces in which people can voice that view without getting a load of online hate is, like, private social media spaces. And there’s something about the romanticization of Anne Lister and Ann Walker, which is a real double-edged sword in prioritizing Anne Lister as a figure in the history of sexuality and not the history of gender, when actually in the 18th and 19th centuries, those are the same thing. 

Yeah, that’s kind of where I think Anne’s place in queer history is at right now, entrenching that division between sexuality and gender, which is really ahistorical when we’re looking at her period. 

Ann: Just so listeners know, next week’s topic is going to be we’re talking about the Ladies of Llangollen, who were actually, maybe in a similar way to how some queer people now might look at Anne Lister as sort of a role model, she kind of looked to them as a role model of just kind of, like, a way that you can exist outside of the usual gender binary, that two women could live together in a committed way. Could you talk a bit about, either of you, just about Anne Lister’s visit to them and what that might have meant to her? 

Sarah: Yes, so Lister and her aunt Anne visit North Wales in the summer of 1822. They’re travelling sort of all over, but she is really, really intent on going and meeting the Ladies of Llangollen, and she is sort of, yeah, kind of hovering around the area that they live in for a while. She manages to get, through a local innkeeper, where she and her aunt are staying, she’s able to get an introduction through them because it’s not… Because at this point, they are celebrities. Like the Ladies of Llangolen were celebrities; they’d had Byron visit them, I think Wordsworth visited them at one point. All these, like, really famous literary figures had specifically gone and met them. 

So yeah, if we’re thinking about fandom as well, like Anne Lister was being a bit of a fangirl, like, she was really wanting to go and meet these two people. And yeah, she managed it. She went and met Sarah Ponsonby and had this little meeting with her because Eleanor Butler had, I think it’s kind of the equivalent of cataracts, and she’d had a kind of surgery. So, she’d had eye surgery, but she couldn’t meet with her. But Lister was able to meet with Sarah Ponsonby, and they have a chat, and they’re talking about literature, and they’re talking about life. She writes this very long journal entry about this meeting and the significance of this meeting to her. 

I think quite a lot of Lister scholars have talked about this specific trip, and I think because it is just so ripe in terms of that… It’s so reflective of, I think, how a lot of us now feel about queer people in the past; wanting that connection, wanting to have that conversation with them. And Lister got to have that, she got to have that conversation with them. If we think of it in sort of anachronistic terms, like, she got to talk to her queer elders, she got to meet one of her queer elders and have a full-on confab with her. She gives her a rose from the garden, and she leaves, and she’s very affected by it. She describes feeling very low after she’s come away from Plas Newydd because it just has been so impactful to her. 

Ann: I love that… Just because I was researching for this episode and then for next week’s episode, and I realized like, oh my gosh! She got to meet… Because the timeline, like, they’re quite a bit older than her, but they were still around. So, exactly like you said, just to be able to meet them. And also, I think just in terms of Anne Lister’s story, queer history in general, I think just to always be finding and elevating and reminding everybody, like, look at these queer icons in history, it wasn’t just invented in the 20th century! Gender nonconforming people have always been around. I think that’s so important for people to know and to acknowledge and to find these people and learn about them. 

Even Anne Lister, who was a chaotic, I think I said at the beginning, just a real problematic fave, but it’s like, the fandom that she has, I appreciate because she is one of the queer people from this time period who we know the most about because of these diaries. But then, for her to look back to the Ladies of Llangollen to be like, “Wow, these people are similar to me!” For her to have that kind of role model. And the Ladies of Llangollen, I don’t know who they were looking back to, but like, there have been these sorts of these role models for people, and I think it’s just really valuable to keep elevating their stories. The Anne Lister thing is so like you’re describing, Kit, how she’s become sort of an avatar for these very contemporary discussions, which kind of takes away from like, but who was she really? Like, she was a complicated person with all these conflicting parts to her. 

Anyway, I’m just saying, I think it’s so moving that she got to meet the Ladies of Llangollen, and I think that that’s… Because I know people go there for similar tourism reasons as well, like just in terms of, like, queer history, places you can go. There are so few people we know about where there were, there have been so many queer people in history, but their stories just aren’t well-known, and these are kind of two, and I’m happy to bring them on this podcast to talk about them. 

I want to ask both of you if you have… Because if people are like, “Wow, these two people, they know so much stuff!” I know that you both do work in the field of queer history. How could people get in touch with you if they want to work with you in some way or to just read what you’re doing? 

Kit: Yeah, find me on Instagram, @KitHeyamWriter. Find me on Bluesky, @KRHeyam, and my website, keep up to date with stuff that I’m writing and stuff that I’m doing with museums. I have a new book which I’ve almost finished, so you can take a look out for that. Yeah, Sarah, what about you? 

Sarah: I’ve got a website, SarahWingrove.com, where I have everything linked. I’ve had quite a few of the different papers that I’ve given about Lister and her world have been recorded, so if you want to go and watch those back, then you can. I’m also on Bluesky, I think it’s @SazWingrove at Bluesky. Yeah, I pop things on there. And I wanted to say before we finished, so obviously, this is Vulgar History. 

Ann: Yes!

Sarah: Yeah, I did look up, because I know that Lister said, she described a lot of things as being vulgar. So, I looked up how many times she described things as vulgar in her journals, because I thought you’d appreciate it. From what I could find, I think, in the entirety of her journals, she describes things as being vulgar 225 times. The highest count is in 1824 when she describes things as vulgar 22 times. The only caveat, so I think it brings it down a little bit, is 14 of those instances across the journals, she’s specifically referencing vulgar or common fractions. [Kit laughs]

Ann: Oh, mathematical vulgarity. 

Sarah: There’s still over 200 instances where she’s describing people, places, and things as being vulgar. [laughs]

Ann: So, this is the perfect podcast to talk about her on. [laughs]

Kit: [laughs] That’s so cool. 

Ann: She would be so angry about it. [Ann and Sarah laugh] Well, thank you both so much. I just want to remind the listeners as well. So, my book Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Uncrowned Queen, is coming out in North America in February 2026. You can get all the information about that at RebelOfTheRegency.com. And I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that some UK publisher publishes it, too, because it’s about your country, so why wouldn’t somebody jump on this? So, hopefully they will as well. 

Kit: I hope so. 

Ann: Anyway, Kit Heyam, Sarah Wingrove, thank you so much for joining me. Well, here’s the thing. I mean, I would love to see it in the UK, but also I’m just like, [squirmy sound] because I know people are really weird about the royal family there. So, we’ll see how they take it if it does show up. 

Sarah: I’d be interested in reading it. 

Ann: Well, I mean, just to learn about Pergami, I have a picture of him in it. [laughs] So, you can see the mustache. 

Sarah: [laughs] Yes!

Ann: Anyway, thank you both so much. 

Kit: Thank you so much for having me. 

Sarah: Thanks so much. 

—————

Hi, hello, it’s me again. Just kidding about ending the episode. I realized after I finished recording with Kit and Sarah that I had forgotten to get their thoughts about a score for Anne Lister. So, if you’re a new listener to this podcast, or if you just like reminders of things, at the end of these episodes, where we’re talking about a person’s life from birth to death, I like to score them on what we call the Fredegund Memorial Scandaliciousness Scale. I’ve been doing this since 2019, since the podcast started, and I can’t stop now. 

So, we score everybody in four different categories, and it’s really important this season that I remember to do this because with the whole Regency vibes of it all, I’ve decided I want to reward the “Diamond of the Season” at the end of this Regency Era series, like they do in Bridgerton. And so, we need to get these scores. The Diamond of the Season is not going to necessarily be the person with the highest score, but that will be part of the consideration. Like on Dancing with the Stars, there’s the judges’ score, and then there’s the audience vote. So, I think we’re going to have these scores. And then at the end of the series, or towards the end of the series, you can all help vote for who’s the Diamond of the Season. But I mean, come on, Anne Lister, we need to give this a score, this episode. 

So, what the categories are are: The first category is Scandaliciousness, which is how scandalous did Anne Lister… How did people perceive her in her time and place? The second category is Schemieness, which can be in the form of like literal schemes, or just somebody who’s really ambitious and really flexible in the face of life’s twists and turns. Significance: significance in their time, significance to history is the next category. And the final category is what we call the Sexism Bonus, which, for some people, that’s where they can make up some scores they might not get in other categories. But it’s really thinking, how much did living in a patriarchal society impact this person? And how much more could they have maybe done if that wasn’t the situation? 

So, I emailed both Kit and Sarah, and so I’m going to— Ahh, my cat has thoughts as well, she just walked across the laptop keyboard as I was trying to open this email. That’s Hepburn, she’s my cat. To new listeners, please know: She’s great. So, here are Kit’s thoughts for the first category, Scandaliciousness. Kit says, “When you combine the relationships with the dress and the financial independence, I reckon this is a solid 10 out of 10.” Sarah says, “I’m going to give her an 8 because I think Lister was also very good at conforming when she needed to, and there are so many instances of her pointing to others and their scandalous behaviour to distract from her own.” So, I’m going to average that out. A 10 from Kit, an 8 from Sarah. I’m going to say 9 out of 10 for Scandaliciousness. 

The next category is Schemieness. Kit says, “I mean, this is how she got most of her hookups, including with plenty of ‘straight women.’ 9.” is what Kit says. Sarah says: “10 out of 10 for Miss Ann Lister. Ever the planner, she had a scheme for pretty much everything. And they would generally be incredibly thought out and meticulous in nature.” I would say the schemieness of just inventing her code, frankly. So, 10 out of 10 for Schemieness for Anne Lister. 

The next category is Significance, and Kit says, “Her journals are second to none, even without the queerness. So, 10 out of 10 for Significance.” And Sarah says, “I agree with Kit. Her journals reveal so much about not only queer life in late Georgian and early Victorian eras, but life in general and minutiae in great detail. She’s also such a significant figure for so many people now, and her impact cannot be underplayed. 10 out of 10.” I agree. 10 out of 10 Significance. 

The fourth category is Sexism. Kit says, “I think she definitely experienced it, but wasn’t held back by it as much as many women at the time. Maybe a 4.” Sarah says, “I would argue that sexism impacted her in ways we do not always immediately see. Because we think of her as so singular, but she still experienced it much like any other woman of her era. It frustrated her to no end when she was denied access to spaces or had her efforts undermined because she was a woman. Absolutely, she challenged sexism and often succeeded, but it still shaped her life and those of her partners. 7 out of 10.” So, I’m going to go with a higher score there. We’re going to go with a 7, to round up with Sarah’s higher score, which gives Anne Lister a total score of 36 out of 40. 

In terms of this series, the Regency Era series, this, you know, this is a high score for now, but we’ve only done two episodes so far. Still, I think this puts her up in the top 10 of all-time people we’ve ever profiled on this podcast, which I think is correct because we give great marks to people who are schemey and scandalous, especially when they’re also significant. And that’s Anne Lister’s whole life. Like, literally, she’s in the top 10 now. 

If you go to my website, which is VulgarHistory.com at the top, there’s a button that says ‘Scores.’ And so, you can see all the scores of all the people who, from all the past episodes, to see where your faves might land. Anne Lister is just slightly above fellow queer Georgian era person, Le Chevalier d’Éon, who had a 35.5. I’m just looking for other… Mary, Queen of Scots, who had some queer elements to her story; she would wear trousers sometimes, and she was very close to her ladies-in-waiting in a very good friends way, perhaps, she also scored 36, same as Anne Lister. Njinga of Ndongo, who we profile, is also a queer figure who had some gender bending in her story as well, has a 36 as well. So, I’m delighted to kick this series off with such a high score for Miss Anne Lister, lesbian icon. 

Next week on the podcast, if things go according to plan, which they don’t always, but I think they will this time, we’re going to be looking at some more queer people from this era. So, stay tuned for that next week. Thank you so much for listening to Vulgar History. You can find out more about my book, Rebel of the Regency, which is about Caroline of Brunswick, who Anne Lister, as we discussed, even Anne Lister was writing about her in her diary. Nobody could not talk about Caroline of Brunswick, the rebel of the Regency era. My book, you can get all the information about it at RebelOfTheRegency.com. And if you pre-order it, it comes out in February in North America and hopefully at around the same time in the UK as well and other places. If you pre-order it and send me a picture of your receipt, then you can get a free membership to my Patreon, a free membership to my Substack, and also a paper doll of Carolina Brunswick. 

Anyway, thank you so much for listening to Vulgar History. Until next time, keep your pants on and your tits out. 

Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Ann Foster, that’s me! Editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. Transcripts of this podcast are available at VulgarHistory.com by Aveline Malek. You can get early, ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon for as low as one dollar a month at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter. Vulgar History merchandise is available at VulgarHistory.com/Store for Americans and for everyone else at VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. Follow us on social media @VulgarHistoryPod and get in touch with me via email at VulgarHistoryPod@gmail.com. 

References:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Learn more about Kit and their work at kitheyam.com

Learn more about Sarah and her work at sarahwingrove.com

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Preorder info for Ann’s upcoming book, Rebel of the Regency!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Get 15% off all the gorgeous jewellery and accessories at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠common.era.com/vulgar⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠commonera.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and use code VULGAR at checkout

Get Vulgar History merch at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vulgarhistory.com/store⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (best for US shipping) and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vulgarhistory.redbubble.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (better for international shipping)

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support Vulgar History on Patreon ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Vulgar History is an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which means that a small percentage of any books you click through and purchase will come back to Vulgar History as a commission. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Use this link to shop there and support Vulgar History.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠