Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister
A companion book to the recent TV miniseries. Anne Lister was a Tory landowner in Yorkshire who kept an enormous, highly detailed diary of everything she did, over five million words. The book concerns itself with 1832/
Highly active, she traveled in Europe, studied medicine, climbed mountains, always in a hurry. She managed her estate and various business ventures, remodeled the grounds, working sixteen hours a day, covering miles hiking over her lands, studying and scribbling in her diary. She was politically conservative and a committed Anglican. She also understood from a young age she was a lesbian and pursued young women. The book recounts her courtship with a neighboring heiress, Ann Walker. Lister woos her with the objective of physical gratification, access to Walker's wealth and a desire to settle down in a committed relationship. She achieves these goals, and the two commit themselves to each other and live as a married couple.
Listers' diaries are utterly frank. She disguised the more personal details in code.