She had several lesbian love affairs from her schooldays onwards, often on long trips abroad; muscular and androgynous in appearance, always dressed in black and highly educated, she was later known—generally unkindly—as "Gentleman Jack".

Her final significant relationship was with Ann Walker, to whom she was notionally married in Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York, which is now celebrated as the birthplace of lesbian marriage in Britain.

Lister's diaries reveal much about contemporary life in West Yorkshire, including her development of historic Shibden Hall and her interests in medicine, mathematics, landscaping, mining, railways and canals.

[5] Raine was the illegitimate, half-Indian daughter of an East India Company surgeon in Madras, brought to Yorkshire after his death and set to inherit a substantial amount of money.

In addition to earnings from the agricultural tenancy, Lister's financial portfolio included properties in town, shares in the canal and railway industries, mining, and stone quarries.

Her wealth allowed her some measure of freedom to live as she pleased, and she used the income from her varied portfolio to finance her two passions: the renovation of Shibden Hall, and European travel.

[15] Eventually the women took communion together on Easter Sunday (30 March) 1834 in Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York, and thereafter considered themselves married, but without legal recognition.

The church has been described as "an icon for what is interpreted as the site of the first lesbian marriage to be held in Britain", and the building now hosts a commemorative blue plaque.

[19] Lister greatly enjoyed travel, although her biographer Angela Steidele suggests her trips in later life were also a way to "evade the self realisation that she had failed at everything she set her hand to".

[22] Returning to Paris with her Aunt Anne in 1826, she resumed an affair with a widow named Maria Barlow whom she had met on her previous visit to the city.

While there, she demonstrated both her strong adventurous streak and considerable physical fitness by ascending Monte Perdido (11,007 ft; 3,355 m), the third highest peak in the Pyrenees.

[23][24] Returning to Shibden Hall in 1831, Lister found life with her father and sister Marian so uncomfortable that she left again almost immediately to visit the Netherlands for a short trip with Mariana Lawton.

[29] Lister's final and most extensive trip began in June 1839, when she left Shibden Hall accompanied by Walker and two servants; they travelled in their own carriage through France, Denmark, Sweden and Russia, arriving in St Petersburg in September and Moscow in October.

Few people from Western Europe had visited this area, let alone West European women, in part because of unrest amongst the local population against the Tsarist regime.

[38] More than 40 years after her death, while reporting on a dispute over the ownership of Shibden Hall, the Leeds Times in 1882 stated, "Miss Lister's masculine singularities of character are still remembered".

[39] It began in 1806 as scraps of paper, recording in secret code parcels sent to and from Eliza Raine, and eventually became the 26 quarto volumes, ending at her death in 1840.

In addition to her handwriting being difficult to decipher,[10] around one-sixth of the diary is encrypted in a simple code Eliza and she had devised, combining the Greek alphabet, zodiac, punctuation, and mathematical symbols,[11] and it describes in great detail her lesbian identity and affairs,[40] as well as the methods she used for seduction.

[49][page needed] In 2022 Russian researcher Olga Khoroshilova published a book about Lister's final and dramatic journey in Russia.

[51] The first episode of the 1994 BBC Two series A Skirt Through History, titled "A Marriage", features Julia Ford as Anne Lister, and Sophie Thursfield as Marianna Belcombe.

[55] Chamber folk duo O'Hooley & Tidow included a song about Anne Lister, "Gentleman Jack", on their 2012 album The Fragile.

[56] The 2019 BBC-HBO historical TV drama series Gentleman Jack, starring Suranne Jones as Lister, depicts her life as "the first modern lesbian".

In 2019 Penguin Books published a companion volume by the series' senior consultant, Anne Choma, which includes newly transcribed and decoded entries from Lister's diaries.