ABSTRACT
Anne Lister was a Yorkshire gentlewoman who resided in a manor house called Shibden Hall in the early nineteenth century An heiress, she was able to educate herself in the classics, she expressed no interest in men, and she did not have to marry in coded portions of her extensive diaries, Anne Lister wrote of her passionate relationships with women, noting every “kiss” (her term for orgasm) she experienced. Although she did not use the word lesbian, at age thirty, she wrote, “I love and only love the fairer sex and thus, beloved by them in turn my heart revolts from any other love but theirs” 1
