{"id":6082,"date":"2026-09-16T11:38:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T10:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/?p=6082"},"modified":"2026-09-27T10:59:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T09:59:22","slug":"self-possession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/2026\/09\/16\/self-possession\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-Possession"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Anne Lister was an English land owner and business woman in the first half of the 19th century. She was also a poorly disguised lesbian. Her extraordinary life has been beautifully white-washed in the BBC series, “Gentleman Jack.”<\/a> It can be recommended, with or without knowing the historical facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lister left very detailed diaries in which modern readers can follow not only her sexual exploits, but how she made social mistakes and learned from her mistakes. Her self-possession was quite extraordinary. She cared little for what others thought of her, other than how her opportunities were affected by their opinions. She knew what opinions had effects, and which did not. Every relationship (other than that with her aunt) had strategic significance or none at all. Her one true friend \u2014 her muse, her guide, her witness, her judge \u2014 was her diary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anne Lister toyed with the idea of becoming an author, but never got around to it, presumably for lack of something to say to readers of her time. Her diaries were published 148 years after her death, which was arguably the earliest time they could have found an audience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Anne Lister were to live out her adventures today, she would pass as a hard-headed business woman who might have appeared in a celebrity gossip column when she married an heiress. Her only oddity would be her penchant for wearing a waistcoat with a full-length black skirt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One can hardly imagine the scandal and the outrage that her diaries would have caused in 1840. Everyone in her life would interact, not with her, but with her discredited public persona. Even her servants would smirk. The opinions of others, regardless of whether she respected them, would have defined her existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would be easily convinced that every age has its Anne Lister, each lost to history. They have no motivation to attract attention to themselves. We quite nearly lost Lister’s story because she had hidden her diaries in a wall of her house; she had no intention that they should be read by others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A diary is therefore the essential tool for navigating whatever period of history you find yourself in. You should necessarily be surrounded by people who subscribe whole-heartedly to the conventions of the age, conventions that you know are going to evolve. You cannot take them seriously, and yet, you must understand them and work with them without going crazy. You need someone historically sane to talk to; you need a diary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To be in one’s mind is to be out of one’s time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[93],"tags":[13,41,48,157,136,84],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6082"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6154,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6082\/revisions\/6154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}