Nature's Domain: Anne Lister and the Landscape of Desire

May 1832: Anne Lister was making her way home to Halifax and ancient Shibden Hall. Betrayed once again by another woman’s marriage plans, she knew her romantic youth was over. So many of her female friends had married and settled.

Anne cast around forlornly for the life-companion she had so long sought. She held melancholy spirits at bay by reading new geology and new gardening books in Shibden’s well-stocked library.
 Then a chance re-acquaintance with neighbouring heiress Ann Walker changed all that. Anne Lister is best known to us as a lesbian diarist. Nature’s Domain tracks her intense courtship of Ann Walker, vividly and candidly recorded in Anne’s daily journals - and partly written in her own secret code.

This influential Anne Lister book also documents how she began redesigning the Shibden landscape and playing a powerful new role in the local political tumult after the passing of the great Reform Bill.

This dramatic story, hitherto unknown and never before unpublished, unfolds to New Year’s Eve 1832. It records how Anne Lister’s indomitable will enabled her to mould nature to her own powerful desires.

“Nature’s Domain gives a compelling overview of a key time in Anne Lister’s remarkable life. Jill Liddington guides us knowledgeably through the diaries of 1832, offering crucial insight into Anne’s private and candour observations about love, sex, money and politics.”
Laura Johansen, Cultural Destinations Manager, Halifax.

Jill Liddington is co-author of One Hand Tied Behind Us (1978) which became a suffrage classic. She is author of Presenting the Past: Anne Lister of Halifax 1791-1840 (1994) and of Female Fortune: the Anne Lister diaries 1833-36 (1998). She is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, and lives in Mytholmroyd near Halifax.

Sally Wainwright’s BBC1 drama series, Gentleman Jack was inspired by Female Fortune and Nature’s Domain