These remarkable diaries are a piece of lost lesbian history. Anne Lister defied the role of womanhood seen in the novels of Jane Austen: she was bold, fiercely independent, a landowner, industrialist, traveller - and lesbian. She kept extensive diaries, written partly in code, of her life and loves[...]

From the the multitude of papers collected and filed by Anne Lister come the diaries of herself and her lover, an Indian heiress, and all their letters to each other, some in secret code. This is the first part of their story. As far as possible their own words have been used to tell their tale, and[...]