I found this an excellent way into the material.Īlso, for fans of the television series Gentleman Jack, this pretty much picks up where season one leaves off. I also liked the focus this book took when wading through the abundance of source material: “This book disentangles Anne’s intimacy with Ann Walker and her strategy for exploiting Shibden’s economic potential it measures how effectively friends, neighbours and relatives in Halifax were able to signal their displeasure at this unorthodox relationship and its inheritance implications.” Not just Anne Lister but the glimpses her diaries provide of the world around her and how people reacted to her and her unusual lifestyle. In Helena Whitbread’s book, set in an earlier part of Anne’s life, she felt stuck a lot of the time, worried about money and longing for both love and independence, which could get a little tedious. She has found the woman she wants to spend her life with, she has received her inheritance, so she is able to be active and pursue goals for herself and her property. Having read Helena Whitbread’s book first, though, I didn’t worry too much about what I was missing.Īnother advantage Female Fortune has over the other books I have read so far is simply that it focuses on a more interesting section of Anne Lister’s life. Many of the entries were reduced to merely a handful of lines, and days or weeks were skipped entirely. And it also edits her diary extracts of much of the tedious detail she tended to include. It does a great job of putting both her and her diary extracts in context.

This has been my favourite of the Anne Lister books I’ve read so far.

Female fortune by jill liddington