I Know My Own Heart: Anne Lister of Shibden Hall (1791–1840) | LGBTQ+ History Sleep Story

Drift off to sleep learning about Anne Lister, the Yorkshire landowner, traveller and diarist often called "the first modern lesbian," who recorded her entire life in a secret code and waited two hundred years to be read.Born in 1791 and mistress of Shibden Hall above Halifax, Anne Lister wrote roughly five million words of diary across her lifetime, and about a sixth of it in what she called her "crypthand," a cipher built from the Greek alphabet and algebraic symbols, invented as a teenager to write to her first love, Eliza Raine, at school in York. In those coded pages she wrote, in January 1821, "I love, and only love, the fairer sex," and in 1823, "I know my own heart." She ran her own estate, sank coal pits, climbed Mont Perdu in 1830 and made the first official ascent of the Vignemale in 1838, and was known unkindly around Halifax as "Gentleman Jack." On Easter Sunday, 30 March 1834, she and Ann Walker of Crow Nest took communion together at Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York, an act they understood as their marriage, and which is now widely called Britain's first lesbian wedding. Lister died of a fever at Kutaisi in Georgia on 22 September 1840, aged 49; Ann Walker brought her body home across the Caucasus, the Black Sea and Europe over roughly seven months, and she was buried at Halifax Parish Church in April 1841. The diaries were decoded in the 1890s by John Lister and Arthur Burrell, who advised burning them, instead they were hidden behind a panel at Shibden Hall until after John Lister's death in 1933. Helena Whitbread transcribed and published them as "I Know My Own Heart" in 1988. In 2011 they were added to the UNESCO Memory of the World register.This story is told twice: first at a natural, comfortable pace, then again more slowly with longer pauses to guide you gently into sleep. Let the Yorkshire rain come across the valley. Let the candle burn down. Let the pen keep moving.🌙 Perfect for: lesbian history, Anne Lister, Gentleman Jack, Regency England, LGBTQ+ history bedtime stories, sleep meditation, insomnia relief, calm narration💜 If this channel helps you rest, subscribe, and tell me in the comments which piece of queer history you'd like told as a bedtime story next.Related episodes:The Quiet Victory of Section 28Emily Dickinson and Susan Gilbert's World of WordsRadclyffe HallThe Two Katharines"I know my own heart." — Anne Lister, 1823#AnneLister #GentlemanJack #LesbianHistory #LGBTQHistory #SleepStory #BedtimeStory #QueerHistory #ShibdenHall #Halifax #Yorkshire #SleepMeditation #CalmNarration #HelenaWhitbread #AnnWalker #RegencyEngland #WomensHistory #InsomniaRelief #RestfulRainbow #HistoryPodcast #CrypthandCode