Gentleman Jack

By Angela Steidele, Katy Derbyshire (translator),

Book cover of Gentleman Jack: A biography of Anne Lister, Regency Landowner, Seducer and Secret Diarist

Book description

Longlisted for the 2019 Portico Prize

The extraordinary life of history's first modern lesbian who inspired the popular television series Gentleman Jack.

Anne Lister's journals were so shocking that the first person to crack their secret code hid them behind a fake panel in his ancestral home. Anne Lister was…

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1 author picked Gentleman Jack as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

L.A. Fields

Author

A real-life figure played in the Gentleman Jack TV series by Suranne Jones, this biography investigates Anne Lister’s personal diaries to reveal a portrait of someone remarkable: a businesswoman landowner in the early 1800s, a world traveler, and a lover of women long before the word “lesbian” would have accurately described her.

Lister’s boldness seems ahead of her time, but perhaps only because women were so rarely free to express themselves. Lister’s numerous liaisons with women, her plans to make and grow her fortune, plus her documentation of her digestive health, all make her relatable over 200 years later.

This…

From L.A.'s list on women dealing with domestic mysteries.