Adapting the queer language of Anne Lister’s diaries

Abstract

The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister (2010) and Gentleman Jack (2019–2022) are both television dramas based on the private journals of Anne Lister (1791–1840), commonly known as “the first modern lesbian.” The reimagined versions of Lister seen in the two television productions are different from each other in a number of ways, and the adaptations deal in different ways with the language used in Lister’s diaries. The diaries were not only partly written in code but make use of idiosyncratic terms for sexual phenomena. While the vocabulary Lister uses does not coincide with present-day queer slang, at least some of it seems to have been understood and used among the women that she had relationships with, just like queer communities have always had and still have their own cultural and linguistic signifiers. This essay examines the language of Anne Lister’s diaries and compares their two adaptations, The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister and Gentleman Jack, with a particular focus on the use of queer vocabulary related to an actual or imagined lesbian community now and in Lister’s day.