Each of the major editions of Lister material focused on selected aspects of her social or sexual identity at specific life stages. This disjunction mirrors similar disjunctions within lesbian and feminist history. Operating in the context of queer and feminist academics of the 1970s and 1980s, Whitbread and Faderman tended to view Lister’s sexuality through a modern lens, applying sexological theories, or viewing her as transmasculine.
sexual/romantic desire
This tag is used broadly when there is discussion of erotic or romantic desire between women, whether or not specific activities are mentioned.
LHMP entry
This section describes the nature of the Shibden Hall archives and their history. It covers the history of the several times the cipher has been assailed, from John Lister and Arthur Burrell’s initial cracking of the code, through several researchers who chose to exclude the references to sexuality from their deciphered transcripts, up through Whitbread’s publication of that previously censored material. The nature of Lister’s sexuality was known as early as 1892 but was suppressed for almost a century after that, with each new researcher re-discovering and re-erasing it.
The introduction begins with an overview of Lister’s life and a brief explanation of her importance to various aspects of history. [Note: I’ll skip the background details, as I assume readers are familiar with the general history.]
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.
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.
The Second Edition Material
As done for Mary Read, here’s a highly speculative timeline structured around key events in the General History narrative, though there are fewer anchor points to specific dates. (Both women’s narratives make reference to things like the King’s Pardon, but in ways that don’t align well with the known timelines.) I’ve included some details from the 2nd edition which elaborate on events but don’t add substantial changes to the timeline. Many of the dates are vague estimates based on trying to coordinate descriptions in the General History to documented historic events.
The LIFE of ANNE BONNY.
Only two events in Read’s narrative can be tied with certainty to a specific date: her husband’s death around the date of the Peace of Reswick, which occurred in 1697, and her capture and trial in 1720. The following highly speculative timeline is worked backwards and forwards around these dates. Note that this timeline attempts to make sense of the General History narrative, without otherwise evaluating its likely accuracy.
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