This is not so much an article about Anne Lister history as it is Anne Lister historiography. It traces the awareness of her life and diaries, both scholarly and popular. The article begins with a very brief biography that situates her life in time and space.
England
Covering topics relating specifically to England or generally to the region equivalent to the modern United Kingdom. Sometimes lazily and inaccurately used generally for the British Isles, especially when articles don’t specifically identify the nationality of authors.
LHMP entry
The main point of this article is how, in the course of a Victorian divorce trial that was a ostensibly about heterosexual adultery, lesbianism became the ghost at the banquet–present largely in the refusal of any of the participants to name it. The situation shows the overlapping dynamic between the image of female romantic friendships as acceptable and unproblematic, and the anxiety around friendships that appeared to infringe on marriage imperatives.
In the 18th century, the ideals around female romantic friendships included the image of a rural retirement from society. Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the “Ladies of Llangollen,” not only achieved this goal but helped promulgate the image of “cottage life” through extensive renovations, interior and exterior decoration, and the development of the grounds.
This is a general survey of sexuality in the 18th century. This summary only covers chapter 8 “Tribadism: A New Sort of Sin.” It opens with a quatrain from the satirical poem “The Adulteress” which unambiguously uses “tommy” in reference to sex between women, then move on to a summary of the life of Catherine Vizzani. The Vizzani text represents a medical view still focused on the one-sex model and the interpretation of lesbianism as a form of hermaphroditism.
The motif of the passionless woman was invented by medical writers in the 18th century in England and then promulgated more generally initially via fiction. This totally upended the previous idea of female sexual desire, envisioning women’s sexuality as entirely distinct from men’s.
Moore examines the life of 18th century English artist and aristocrat Mary Delany, particularly with respect to her relations with other women. As an artist and writer, Delany’s work has often been overlooked due to focusing on “feminine” genres and media, creating domestic ornaments rather than works in more traditionally “serious” genres. She was known in particular for her highly-realistic botanical illustrations created as cut-paper collages that were renowned for their realism.
As much of this material is functionally identical to what’s discussed in Hitchcock 2012, I’m going to skim more than usual.
This article examines the language of affection and romance used in letters from Mary Stuart (Queen Mary II) to a close friend, confidante, and courtier Frances Apsley, placing the language within several contexts relevant to understanding it. (Mary’s sister Anne—Queen Anne I—had similar correspondence with Frances Apsley, but this article focuses on Mary.)
This article examines themes of female romantic friendship and its limitations in the Restoration-era play Queen Catherine by Mary Pix. The play is a historical tragedy, centered around female characters, involving Catherine (widow of King Henry V) and her waiting woman Isabella, both of whom have heterosexual romances that drive the tragedy.
This article is one of those that eventually went into Traub’s The Renaissance of Lesbianism (chapter 6), but since I did a higher level overview when I covered that book, it’s worth examining more closely.
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