Drama on `first modern lesbian`

The life of Anne Lister has become the subject of a new drama.

Washington: The tales of first modern lesbian Anne Lister have become the subject of a lavish new costume drama. The role of Lister, a.k.a ‘Gentleman Jack’ to her Yorkshire neighbours, will be played by Maxine Peake, reports The Independent.

Lister had written down episodes of her life and travels in a four million-word collection of diaries before she died in 1840 at age 51 because of an insect bite insect while travelling in the Caucasus Mountains. She had also briefed about her relationships, which were often sexually charged. Major parts of the journals were encrypted and decoded in the 1930s, as she had developed special code to exchange letters with her first lover Eliza Raine and the married Marianna Belcombe Lawton with whom she indulged a 16 year long relationship. In the sexually explicit diaries, Lister referred to orgasms as “kisses”, and marked her diary with a cross to indicate when she had experienced one. An October 1820 entry in the diary revealing her attraction to the same sex, read: "I love and only love the fairer sex and thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any love but theirs." Also, another note from the same year said: "Yet my manners are certainly peculiar, not all masculine but rather softly gentleman-like. I know how to please girls.” The one-off special for BBC Two will be filmed next month at the Lister’s former home Shibden Hall near Halifax where she lived with her “wife” Anne Walker. ANI