A review by caseythecanadianlesbrarian
I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries, 1791-1840 by Anne Lister

4.0

The Diaries of Anne Lister is definitely the oldest “lesbian” book I’ve read to date. I’m putting lesbian in quotation marks because what is actually the most fascinating things about the diary is how Anne Lister explores her attraction to women and her sexual identity in a time before sexuality was such a defining characteristic for our identities and before the word lesbian even existed with our contemporary understanding of it (if anyone as nerdy as me is wondering, “lesbian” was first used in 1890 as “female homosexual,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary—so it’s really a relatively new word!). Back to Anne Lister: she was an upper-class Englishwoman living in Halifax and Shibden Hall, West Yorkshire in the early 1800s who kept a very comprehensive diary of her life, a significant amount of which was written in a code that Lister herself had created....
see the rest of my review here: http://lesbrary.com/2012/04/20/casey-reviews-i-know-my-own-heart-the-diaries-of-anne-lister-1791-1840-edited-by-helena-whitbread/