The revolting Anne Lister: the U.K.'s first modern lesbian

Anne Lister has recently been turned from a relatively obscure figure of scholarly interest into a modern-day icon of lesbian sexuality. This article asks what gesture we perform when we celebrate Lister's life through the lens of modernity. Why do we need Lister to be modern, and what does it mean to be so? If Lister is recognizable to us as an active and unashamed lesbian subject, is it that modernity itself has managed to erase queer shame? Arguably, rather than claiming Lister for modernity, perhaps it is Lister who is putting our modernity into question.