Anne Lister was widely read and infinitely curious about scientific topics. When she turned her curiosity to the human body, there was an underlying purpose.
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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 347 - On the Shelf for June & July 2026 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2026/07/18)
Welcome to On the Shelf for—well, this is a catch-up episode covering both June and July 2026, after my broken arm-related vacation. I’m back to typing with both hands now, though it’s a bit slower and more painful than usual and I may continue using my computer’s speech-to-text function sometimes to help out.
Attention has been drawn to the fact that -- in all of her voluminous journaling -- Anne Lister never identifies with existing terms for women-loving-women, such as "tribade" or "lesbian" (yes, the word existed during her era) and explicitly rejected identification with "sapphic." Some have seen this as a strong argument for viewing her primarily through a transgender lens. But this article points out a different angle: that Lister considered herself to be unique and unprecedented in terms of identity, not only her sexual identity, but her social identity in general.
My brief break is over and I have another series of Anne Lister posts coming before moving on to other topics. This is a collection of articles revolving around archival material and/or the relationship between history and popular culture.
Well I did it: I posted something for the Project on every day in June. This was, in part, thanks to tackling the longer work that could be chunked up into multiple posts. I try to do the marathon posting every year for Pride month, but this year was on hard mode due to the broken arm. The cast comes off in two days, after which there will be an unknown period of physical therapy getting back to 100%. I'll be taking a short break from the blog, even though I have another collection of articles all written up and ready to go.
Sometimes when I'm summarizing the conclusion of a work it feels like I'm just being repetitive. But in this case I think an overall summary of my summary of the book helps to put all of the pieces together into a big picture.
As we come to the close of the analysis chapters of Orr's dissertation, we finally focus in on the course of Lister's courtship of Barlow and the landmarks in its progression.
In this section of Orr's dissertatioin, she traces how Lister used gradual revelations of her sexual history as past of negotiating her courtship of Mrs Barlow.
We finally get to the section of Orr's dissertation that explores in detail Anne Lister's romance with Mrs. Barlow.
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