Anne Lister's Diaries: The Rosetta Stone of 19th Century Lesbianism

GALYIC worked closely with Schools Out for many years, so when Sue Sanders decided to launch LGBT History Month, we agreed to organise an event in Calderdale. We contacted Helena Whitbread, who has written two books about Anne Lister and is currently half way through her full biography. Helena agreed to meet young LGBT people in Shibden Hall to tell them about Anne Lister. We invited the other LGBT youth groups in West Yorkshire, and both Wakefield and Leeds groups met with our members at Shibden Hall. After the tour, our visitors came back to the youth group for food.

In November 2009 GALYIC were one of twelve groups from around the country who were invited to the prestigious LGBT History Month Prelaunch event, held at the British Museum in London. The presentations were about good practice, so we decided to build on the success of the original Anne Lister Project and developed an eight minute presentation about Anne Lister's life. Click here for a film of the presentation at the British Museum.

We arranged a visit to Shibden Hall where Helena very kindly agreed to meet our presentation group and answered a variety of questions put to her whilst Claire Selby, the curator of Shibden Hall, showed us around the Hall.

We were also allowed to visit the Halifax Library Archive to look at one of the original Anne Lister diaries.

As well as reading information on the internet (see links below) we are very much indebted to Helena's second book, "No Priest But Love: The Journals of Anne Lister from 1824-1826" for the information included in our new presentation.

As part of LGBT History month 2010, our members gave the presentation as an introduction to an afternoon with friends of Anne Lister at Hebden Bridge Library on Sunday,7th February. Our presentation was followed by a talk from Helena Whitbread on Anne's first lesbian relationship when she was at a girls' boarding school in York followed by Jill Liddington who spoke about Anne's long term relationship with Ann Walker, another wealthy landowner from Halifax.

The presentation has been developed into a ten-minute YouTube video entitled Anne Lister of Shibden Hall. Since February 2010 over 30,000 people (mainly women, presumably lesbians) from around the world have viewed it. Feedback has been very good with several viewers adding it as their favourite and many giving it a good rating.

A film, The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister, was made by the BBC and starred Maxine Peake; it was shown on BBC television in May 2010 and has been screened at various LGBT film festivals around the world.