An Evening at The Octagon with Jill Liddington

An Evening at the Grassington Octagon Theatre with author Jill Liddington

Jill Liddington is coming to the Grassington Octagon on the 22nd August to talk to us about the real Ann Lister and Jill's research into this amazing woman

Tickets for this event are £5.

Tickets can be bought in The Stripey Badger or online here

Female Fortune

Female Fortune is the book which inspired Sally Wainwright to write  Gentleman Jack, now a major drama series for the BBC and HBO.   Lesbian  landowner Anne Lister inherited Shibden Hall in 1826. She was an  impressive scholar, fearless traveller and successful businesswoman,  even developing her own coalmines. Her extraordinary diaries,  running to 4-5 million words, were partly written in her own secret code  and recorded her love affairs with startling candour. The diaries were  included on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2011.   Jill  Liddington's classic edition of the diaries tells the story of how Anne  Lister wooed and seduced neighbouring heiress Ann Walker, who moved in  to live with Anne and her family in 1834. Politically active,  Anne Lister door-stepped her tenants at the 1835 Election to vote Tory.  And socially very ambitious, she employed architects to redesign both  the Hall and the estate.   Yet Ann Walker had an inconvenient number of  local relatives, suspicious of exactly how Anne Lister could pay for all  her grand improvements. Tensions grew to a melodramatic  crescendo when news reached Shibden of the pair being burnt in effigy.    This 2022 edition includes a fascinating Afterword on the recent  discovery of Ann Walker's own diary. Female Fortune is essential reading  for those who watched Gentleman Jack and want to know more about the  extraordinary woman that was Anne Lister.