Well, technically there are non-secret diarists, but still...
I suppose it is possibly a good thing that there is a popular-type biography of Anne Lister just out: Gentleman Jack: A biography of Anne Lister, Regency Landowner, Seducer and Secret Diarist by Angela Steidele and Katy Derbyshire, though the word 'secret' there makes me cringe. Keeping a diary was, after all, in most cases a private practice (and Ms Lister was far from the first to keep one in a manner not readily penetrable to any reader who might come across it, come on down, Samuel Pepys, you old lech!) and not meant for any eyes other than those of the person keeping it.
While Lister has hardly been neglected as a subject since the 1980s, when extracts from the diaries were published by Virago, and there has been a good deal of academic industry around her ever since, it does require a certain amount of dedication to devote oneself to even part of her very active life: I once examined a thesis on her months in France undergoing medical treatment (mentioned in that review), and as the scholar in question not only had to wrestle with Lister's handwriting and substantial passages in 'crypt hand' but did so on microfilm: RESPECT, one was inclined to award the degree for that level of dedication alone. We note that the biographer has, indeed, based her account on the existing secondary literature.
While apparently the biographer invokes an early incident in Lister's life as perchance influential on Jane Eyre, it has long seemed to me that the work which may suggest local knowledge of That There Miss Lister is surely Shirley - a woman landowner determined to manage her own affairs.
Incidentally, my sense of the matter of why Ann Walker ended up in an asylum was so that her male relatives, who were probably not so much bothered about a relationship that would not bring a shameful bastard into the family, but were extremely irked about money going out of family hands, had her certified for that purpose once Lister was no longer in the picture and able to bring her significant local clout to bear. This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2842765.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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