To her horror, she discovered they ran to a total of four million words - that is, about three times longer than Samuel Pepys's diary. Her curiosity aroused, Jill Liddington decided to check the diaries' word-count in the Archives at Halifax.
Then in 1988 Helena Whitbread's I Know My Own Heart made the diaries accessible at last to a much wider readership, establishing beyond a scintilla of doubt Anne's lesbianism. Nearly 150 years later, in 1984, a Guardian article 'The two million word enigma' alerted readers to Anne's extensive diaries. Presenting the Past: Anne Lister of Halifax 1791-1840 (Pennine Pens 1994, 2010) tells the dramatic story of how Anne's diaries survived after her death in the remote Caucasus. What will be the end of it? Heaven protect and guide me!' As always, she derived considerable comfort from her diary, confiding: 'Here I am, at forty-one, with a heart to seek. She ran this small Halifax estate with considerable entrepreneurial flair - developing its coal-mining potential, keeping a vigilant eye on her tenants - and, after the 1832 Reform Act, ensuring those in voting tenancies did indeed vote in her 'Blue' interest - that is, for the Tory candidate.Īlso in 1832, Anne found herself - once again - bitterly betrayed by another woman's marriage plans. In 1826, on the death of her uncle James, Anne Lister inherited Shibden Hall.
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