The woman dubbed the first modern lesbian will be the subject of a new BBC drama.
Actress Maxine Peake, whose previous roles include Myra Hindley, is due to play Anne Lister in the one-off special for BBC Two.
Filming of The Scandalous Diaries of Anne Lister is expected to get
underway next month at the 19th century polymath’s former home Shibden
Hall, near Halifax, which she shared with her “wife” - another local
heiress called Anne Walker with whom she underwent a same-sex marriage
ceremony, reports the Independent.
Lister, who was known as Gentleman Jack to her Yorkshire
neighbours, detailed her life in a volume of explicit diaries which
contain over 4 million written words.
According to the Independent, she was the first woman to be elected
to the committee of the Halifax Literary and Philosophical Society.
Among the entries she made in the diaries was one from October 1820
which read: "I love and only love the fairer sex and thus beloved by
them in turn, my heart revolts from any love but theirs." Another 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.”