This was a tie in for the television series on BBC. I believe Anne Choma is the biographer for Anne Lister and there were also contributions from Sally Wainwright, the writer for the series.
Storygraph's genre challenge includes a challenge for people to read a biography about someone you don't know much about and read a history book about an LGBTQ+ issue. It invited people to combine the two if they wished. I wasn't sure I would do this, but then I came across the audio of this book and I previously found Anne Lister an intriguing figure, having watched a little of the BBC adaptation of her life and diaries.
What did I know about her? I knew she was a lesbian at a time when gay men were persecuted but lesbianism wasn't viewed quite the same way. I knew she was a woman who preferred to wear men's clothing, in black, that she was an independent business woman. I knew she had travelled and had lovers, that she had been married, or as good as married as they could be at the time, to Ann Walker. I knew a bit about her family, her home.
What I didn't know were the specific details. How everything linked together to form a life story. I had little idea of her childhood, her family, where she went, what she did, her lovers, how she met Ann Walker.
Reading non-fiction is something I struggle with. It can be tricky to get settled down, to focus. I have read more non fiction books than I realised. In some cases I don't think I registered what it was I was really reading, or I was too young to notice. The James Herriot books for example. In some cases I had a vague outline of the subject matter and story and that helped me focus, or the subject matter was something deeply interesting to me. Sometimes it was written, not as a factual thing, but a simple story.
My history with non fiction, and my feelings, are so complicated that I decided to try this book in its audio format.
The book is well written, there are no massive long boring parts in particular. The audio version was well read, with two good narrators. One who read the bulk of the novel and the other who read Anne Lister's diary entries.
It was fascinating to learn about Anne Lister. The chapters all gave a timeline overview of what was known about Anne's life, referring to her diary entries to correspond with certain events, and various letters and information about other people around Anne Lister. She was far and away ahead of her time. Independent, a woman of business, and living openly with another woman. Women in same sex relationships were persecuted the same as men, but it was clearly something that was, to put it mildly, frowned upon.
I'm certainly glad that I entered the genre challenge, if only because it helped me discover this book.
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