Listermania

ANNE CHOMA is a transcriber of Lister’s journals and advisor on Gentleman Jack, and the author of the official companion to the series, Gentleman Jack: The Real Anne Lister.

@AnneChoma

It’s been 12 months now since Gentleman Jack first aired on British and American TV, catapulting the extraordinary life of Regency diarist and lesbian Anne Lister into the global mainstream. When I cast my mind back to the eve of transmission, I remember thinking how nervous I felt, and how I hoped that the audience would love and respect Lister just as much as I had done over the years. The same thought crossed my mind when I saw Suranne Jones dressed for the first time in Lister’s signature black pelisse. She looked magnificent. She was everything that I had imagined Anne Lister to be – charismatic, bewitching, almost otherworldly.