The BBC and HBO series Gentleman Jack propelled Anne Lister to international attention, awakening tremendous interest in her diaries, which were partly written in secret code. They record in intimate detail Anne’s intellectual energy and her challenges to many of society’s expectations of women at the time.

In this sequel to Female Fortune, Jill Liddington’s edited transcriptions of the diaries show us Anne from 1836 to 1838. Guiding the reader through life at Shibden Hall after the death of Anne’s father, and after her unconventional ‘marriage’ to wealthy local heiress Ann Walker, Jill Liddington explores the daily lives of these two women, from convivial evenings to Anne’s ruthless pursuit of her own business and landowning ambitions.

Jill Liddington is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, whose main area of expertise is in women's history, especially the interplay between gender and class in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain.

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Jill Liddington As Good as a Marriage: The Anne Lister Diaries and ‘Gentleman Jack’