Gentleman Jack: A Biography of Anne Lister, Regency Landowner, Seducer and Secret Diarist

I didn’t think I could fall more in love with her, and here I am, more in love with her. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll fan your face dramatically on a chaise lounge and yearn for the restrained lesbianism of yesteryear. Great read.

Good mix of some of Lister's translated diaries with historical analysis. One quibble with the author comes at the end of the book, when she demeans Lister as "a beast". Not sure where that came from. It certainly is not the case. Anne Lister gives us a much-needed historical look-see into the personal and sexual lives of young women locked inside a male cage designed to constrain and rob them of all intelligence, joie de vivre and choices in life. Lister's lovers were bisexual or lesbian. She never forced or was violent with any of them, unlike males. She understood the cage and refused to abide it, preferring adventure and freedom, even if it was reckless toward herself. Of Ann Walker, while she was wealthier that Lister, not a small attraction given that women of the time had few income options, she is a less adventuresome lesbian partner but by no means a pushover. It's stunning how well-traveled both women were in comparison to today, when it is utterly unsafe to go and do what these 2 women did 200 years ago.

At 100 pages in and reading this as an adjunct to the HBO series by the same name, I find this book a mixed bag. First, I appreciated the information on Anne Lister’s years as a teenager. Though not much exists of her own writing, there is anecdotal evidence that as a school girl, she displayed the same predatory urges to hook up with young women. Her habits did not change as she grew older.Living in the Regency period and in the countryside, the paucity of eligible men for girls to marry encouraged “companionship,” a perfectly respectable way for two women to socialize, visit friends and relatives, attend the theater together and so on. In these social situations, the unique yet disarming Anne Lister had the perfect cover for her dalliances with other women.The book traces Lister’s affairs chronologically and gives great detail and more than enough minutiae about the relationships of the various people who were in her circle. For those like Jane Austen aficionados who enjoy delving into the first few decades of the 1800’s Regency Period, Lister’s Lesbian proclivities aside, there’s plenty to chew on.“Gentleman Jack” is an able though at times tedious companion to the HBO series. Copious quotes from Lister’s diaries definitely give readers insight into her personality, her incredible abilities at being a seductress, her broad intellect and her cunning business acumen.

Found this excellent book due to the new Gentlemen Jack show. Anne grew up near Halifax in West Yorkshire just south of Haworth where the Bronte sisters (younger - there are connections) lived. My wife is from outside York so many of the locations and settings were familiar. We will certainly be visiting Shibden Hall when we visit Yorkshire again next year.This book is fascinating on so many levels. Day to day life in the Regency Period, the cutthroat business world, the politics, the societal structures, the vast inequities between the sexes, the bright burning zeal and smarts of Anne and of course the unrelenting pursuit of her own desires, interests and loves.The book itself is well and thoughtfully written. The author resists the temptation to judge (too much) as Anne's life and exploits unfold. Given our present politics, it would have been easy to slip into kibitzing about Anne and referencing present day. Rather, we see the unvarnished Anne for who and what she is living in the Regency Period. We watch the unfolding of her virtuoso life performance in her own unapologetic and courageous manner.When the author does weigh in more (late in the book) my conclusions about Anne coincided with hers. Anne is an amazing, intelligent, curious and energetic personality with a relentless drive and an unrelenting ego. A thank you also to to the author for winnowing the immense content of the diaries and trimming the repetitive detailed descriptions Anne provided of just exactly what Anne was thinking whilst pursuing her lovers.In the end, aside from the many interesting events and details, Anne comes across as a remarkable and amazing person. Oscar Wilde said "there is no sin but stupidity" and Anne was perhaps "too clever by far". Christopher Hitchens said "the one unforgivable sin is to be boring". I doubt any of her contemporaries ever described Anne as boring!Thank you also for portraying her brother-in-law Captain Sutherland for who and what he was. An excellent example of Regency Period selfish male privilege complete with disgusting pious self justification!

What a great biography of an interesting life. I came across this book while researching for another and found even the mundane entries in Anne's journals interesting.

This was one of several purchases retaining to Anne Lister. It seems to cover a lot of the sentiment of the original ListerResearchers and scholars. The analysis that “Anne married for money and Ann for love” has left the experts suspicious thatMs. Steidele has never actually read Anne Lister’s diary’s.

Wait until the series is over before you read this incredible accounting of the "Life and times of Anne Lister". Well done, the author took up the calling and delivered.

Not my favorite book on the subject. The diary quote are wonderful, but I don't always agree with the authors interpretation. Research is from secondary sources, and sometimes information is inaccurate. Other books are a better choice.

This book is a really good read by an author who really knew her subject, but the enjoyment of it was marred, at the end, by the authors falling out of love with Anne Lister in the final quarter or so of the book.It was great to have a near cradle to grave overview of this extraordinary life, as so much that has been written so far has been of brief periods of time, due to the overwhelming amount of source material to draw from. However, some important events, such as the trip to Scarborough of Anne Lister and Mariana Lawton were not covered, and as these were pivotal moments they could have helped the reader understand why things turned out as they did. It's also very important to have a historical perspective when tackling a person as complex as Anne Lister. The author was appalled that Anne Lister probably employed children in her mines, but as Ann Walker would also have been employing children in her mills, as did all other industrialists of all sectors of the era, this doesn't make Anne Lister any different from her contemporaries. Her vote rigging for the Tories was shocking, yes, but this kind of thing still happens to this day; Brexit anyone?! Yes, her relationship with Ann Walker was mercurial, but so were most heterosexual relationships, particularly of the gentry, in her day. Just look at the marriage of Mariana to Charles Lawton, or the marriage of Eliza's sister for similar examples in Anne Lister's life. There's no doubt that Anne Lister's drive to seek adventure brought Ann Walker out of her shell, and showed her she was more capable than she thought she was. Only she could have said if she felt at least as emotionally enriched as she was also monetarily fleeced.Another thing to consider is this life was lead way before the invention of psychoanalysis, 100 years before women got the vote, more than 100 years before the invention of sexology and 150 years+ before the Lesbian Feminism of the 1970's and 1980's. Her's was an extraordinary life, pushing against the confines of her day, and we only know the details of both the good and the bad, thanks to a near lifetimes worth of detailed and honest diary writing and copious letter writing. Don't let the last section of this book depress you!

Well written, well judged biography, well translated, too. But the author hasn't read anything like the 4 million words of Gentleman Jack's diary, so much information I was hoping for (especially on her last journey across Russian and Georgia) was missing: the book appears to be based on the limited transcriptins done by previous researchers, none of whom has tackled the entire archive

It's not often I read two biographies of the same person straight off- but Anne Choma's version focussed on one bit of Anne Lister's life ...and ended before she and Miss Walker embarked on their amazing journey to the Caucasus.This version looks at the whole of Lister's life through her vast and detailed diary collection. From her first love affair with a girl at school, her aspirations to cultivate well-to-do friends to help her rise socially, her ambitions for wealth and status (often hampered by limited funds) and her quite fascinating drive, determination and intellect.I think I gained a much better overall image of Lister from Steidele's work...and the constant quotes from her diary. Compelling though she was, I don't think anyone could regard her in a majorly positive light. Indeed Steidele considers her "a beast of a woman" and she was certainly a female Don Juan:"Anne had renewed her vows with Mariana three times, seduced Miss Vallance and Nantz Belcombe, slept countless times with Isabella Norcliffe, flirted with Harriet Milne, Lou Belbombe and Francis Pickford, spent a long time living in Paris with Maria Barlow and then a few weeks with Mme de Rosny.During all these entanglements, Sibella Maclean had been an iron in the fire..."So, quite a cad, as she pusues her conquests for money and sex, stringing them along with lies and omissions.Was interested to read how the Brontes knew of her (a near neighbor); Steidele considers her an influence on Charlotte's unfeminine 'Shirley' and considers the mad Creole Mrs Rochester in ''Jane Eyre' to have been inspired by Lister's first schoolgirl love- mixed-race Eliza Raine, who ended up in an asylum for the insane.Lister was certainly an intrepid and fearless traveller, climbing unconquered mountains and crossing the wilds of Russia in 1840 into the unheard of depths of Azerbaijan and Georgia.I also hadnt realised just how extensive were her diaries,containing an almost obsessive amount of minutiae ("in their egocentric indiscrimination, they foreshadow the banal uniquity of the selfie."). They have not all been transcribed: a proposed attempt was abandoned when it was realised that the 4 million words would take 9 years!Totally fascinating!

I enjoyed this exceptionally good book. Having watched the BBC production with huge enjoyment I also read the BBC book which accompanied it and enjoyed that too.This book is very detailed and informative and showed Anne Lister as she truly was.....selfish to the core and it seemed that Ann Walker's fortune was her main aim. Sad to read of how things went after the marriage and Anne's changed attitude to Ann W. But that's the way it went.

Interesting to start with, but became tedious as it progressed