大象传媒

In the meticulously recorded detail of Anne’s daily life, a picture of the changing world of early 19th century Britain is presented in high definition.

The diaries are startlingly intimate, too. Anne is probably best known for her lesbian relationships, which she recorded religiously and in tantalising detail.

The secret code Anne developed – which she created from a mix of Greek letters, numbers and symbols – allowed her to write candidly about love affairs which would have been unthinkably transgressive to the society in which she lived.

Around a sixth of Anne’s diaries are written in code, which she referred to herself as ‘crypt hand’. Sex, menstruation, money, personal judgments about members of Halifax society, her digestive health - these are the things Anne wished to keep private.

The remainder of the densely-packed pages, detailing the public aspects of her day-to-day interactions, are written in heavily abbreviated English, or ‘plain hand’.

As a way to freely process her innermost thoughts, Anne found her ability to write in code invaluable to the maintenance of her mental health.

‘What a comfort my journal is’, she wrote on the 29th April 1832. ‘How I can write in crypt all as it really is and throw off my mind and console myself. I thank God for it.’

Anne’s secret code was first broken in the late 19th century by her descendent John Lister, alongside Arthur Burrell, a Bradford antiquarian. Because of their transgressive content, the diaries were repressed, and it wasn’t until almost a century later that the truth of what the code revealed had fully emerged, thanks to the pioneering work of local historians and academics.

In this entry from the 24th December 1832, Anne once again moves into code to record a private thought.

At this time, Anne was locked in a bitter rivalry with brothers Christopher and Jeremiah Rawson over the mining of coal on her estate. After recording the detail of a conversation in which she had laid out the terms of her lease in no uncertain terms to Jeremiah, she moved into code to express her satisfaction at having put him in his place.

This is what she writes:

Mr R said he was never beaten but by ladies and I had beaten him. Said I gravely ‘is the intellectual part of us that makes a bargain, and that has no sex, or ought have none.’

Anne Lister’s diaries – along with other items that belonged to her – are kept at the Calderdale Archives in Halifax.

Visit their website to find out more, and practice your mastery of Anne’s code on high-resolution digitised scans of every page.