Some thoughts on Gentleman Jack and some hope that we’ll get to see more

Gentleman Jack, based on the diaries of Anne Lister, has been cancelled after only two seasons. But even so, Suranne Jones’ version of Anne Lister has touched so many people’s hearts and the series has raised awareness about a previously little-known part of history. So here are my thoughts about Gentleman Jack while we hope and pray that the BBC can bring it back.

More about the Ann(e)s!

Anne Clarke, ‘Anne Lister’s Construction of Lesbian Identity’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 7:1 (1996), 23-50

Chris Roulston, ‘Sexuality in Translation: Anne Lister and the Ancients’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 30:1 (2021), 112-135

Jill Liddington, ‘Anne Lister of Shibden Hall, Halifax (1791–1840): Her Diaries and the Historians’, History Workshop Journal, 35:1 (1993) https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article/35/1/45/661946?

Katherine S. Madison, ‘“Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story”: The Use and Representation of Records in Hamilton: An American Musical’, The American Archivist 80:1 (2017), 53–81 https://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article/80/1/53/24471/Who-Lives-Who-Dies-Who-Tells-Your-Story-The-Use

Kirsty McHugh, ‘Sightseeing, social climbing, steamboats and sex: Anne Lister’s 1828 tour of Scotland’, Studies in Travel Writing, 22:4 (2018), 420-435

Simon Joyce, ‘The perverse presentism of rainbow plaques: memorializing Anne Lister’, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 41:5 (2019), 601-610

Images:

2:00 Mrs Turner of Halifax (?), ‘Anne Lister,’ watercolour, 1822, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anne_Lister_Restoration.jpg

2:20 Charles Knight, ‘Town of Halifax, Yorkshire’, in The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (London: 1834), p. 101 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VBDnAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA97&ots=DruFrzO1U5&dq=Penny%20Magazine%20March%2015%2C%201834&pg=PA101#v=onepage&q&f=false

2:25 Thomas Rowlandson and Auguste Charles Pugin, ‘British Institution at Pall Mall’, 1808, Wikimedia Commons, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:British_Institution_(Pall_Mall)_by_Rudolph_Ackermann.jpg

2:45 Thomas Rowlandson, ‘Comforts of Bath: The Ball’, 1798, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Rowlandson_-Comforts_of_Bath-_The_Ball-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

2:50 Joshua Horner, ‘Portrait of Anne Lister’, c. 1830, Wikimedia Commons, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lister_anne.jpg

4:30 ‘Photograph of John Lister’, c. 1890, Wellcome Collection, https://wellcomecollection.org/works/z2jp72a5

8:55 ‘The Devonshire Amusement’, print, 1784, https://picryl.com/media/the-devonshire-amusement-bm-186808085351-ee6dce

9:45 ‘Votes for Women’, poster, 1909, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Votes_For_Women.jpg

14:10 Edward Stanford’, 1898, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stanford%27s_library_map_of_the_world_on_Mercator%27s_projection_(14719827052).jpg