Alpennia Blog

Wednesday, July 22, 2026 - 10:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Not all of the articles in this collection have the historic focus that's my primary interest. But if my teasers intrigue you, the collection is available through Open Access. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #569 Baylis-Green 2023 Self-Conscious Closeting About LHMP Full citation: Baylis-Green, Caroline. 2023. “Self-Conscious Closeting and Paradoxical Writing in Anne Li

Tuesday, July 21, 2026 - 09:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Everything I've read by Stephen Turton on the history of queer language has been fascinating. This is no exception. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #568 Turton 2023 My Use of the Word Love About LHMP Full citation: Turton, Stephen. 2023. “‘My Use of the Word Love’: Lister, Language and the Dictionary” in Decoding Anne Lister: From the Archives to ‘Gentleman Jack’, Chris Roulst

Friday, July 17, 2026 - 20:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Anne Lister was widely read and infinitely curious about scientific topics. When she turned her curiosity to the human body, there was an underlying purpose. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #567 Clark 2023 Anne Lister’s Search for the Anatomy of Sex About LHMP Full citation: Clark, Anna. 2023. “Anne Lister’s Search for the Anatomy of Sex” in Decoding Anne Lister: From the

Saturday, July 18, 2026 - 07:00 lhmpodcast.jpg Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 347 - On the Shelf for June & July 2026 - Transcript (Originally aired 2026/07/18) Welcome to On the Shelf for—well, this is a catch-up episode covering both June and July 2026, after my broken arm-related vacation. I’m back to typing with both hands now, though it’s a bit slower and more painful than usual and I may continue using my computer’s speech-to-text function sometimes to help out. The schedule is…

Sunday, July 12, 2026 - 14:27 lhmpodcast.jpg Major category: LHMPTags: LHMPpodcast2027 Fiction Series Call for Submissions: 2027 Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Fiction Series The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast will be open for submissions in January 2027 for short stories in the lesbian historic fiction genre, to be produced in audio format for the podcast, as well as published in text on the website. I strongly advise authors to review these guidelines thoroughly be

Saturday, July 11, 2026 - 08:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Attention has been drawn to the fact that -- in all of her voluminous journaling -- Anne Lister never identifies with existing terms for women-loving-women, such as "tribade" or "lesbian" (yes, the word existed during her era) and explicitly rejected identification with "sapphic." Some have seen this as a strong argument for viewing her primarily through a transgender lens. But this article points out a different angle: that…

Friday, July 10, 2026 - 16:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project My brief break is over and I have another series of Anne Lister posts coming before moving on to other topics. This is a collection of articles revolving around archival material and/or the relationship between history and popular culture. These write-ups were done using a combination of hand-written notes and speech-to-text software, due to my broken arm. Although I've tried to do careful proofreading, the speech-to-text…

Tuesday, June 30, 2026 - 18:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Well I did it: I posted something for the Project on every day in June. This was, in part, thanks to tackling the longer work that could be chunked up into multiple posts. I try to do the marathon posting every year for Pride month, but this year was on hard mode due to the broken arm. The cast comes off in two days, after which there will be an unknown period of physical therapy getting back to 100%. I'll be taking a short break…

Monday, June 29, 2026 - 17:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Sometimes when I'm summarizing the conclusion of a work it feels like I'm just being repetitive. But in this case I think an overall summary of my summary of the book helps to put all of the pieces together into a big picture. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #564q Orr 2006 A Sojourn in Paris - Conclusion About LHMP Full citation: Orr, Dannielle. 2006. A Sojourn in Paris 182

Sunday, June 28, 2026 - 11:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project As we come to the close of the analysis chapters of Orr's dissertation, we finally focus in on the course of Lister's courtship of Barlow and the landmarks in its progression. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #564p Orr 2006 A Sojourn in Paris - Anne and Mrs Barlow About LHMP Full citation: Orr, Dannielle. 2006. A Sojourn in Paris 1824-25: Sex and Sociability in the

Saturday, June 27, 2026 - 16:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project In this section of Orr's dissertatioin, she traces how Lister used gradual revelations of her sexual history as past of negotiating her courtship of Mrs Barlow. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #564o Orr 2006 A Sojourn in Paris - Anne’s Sexual Story About LHMP Full citation: Orr, Dannielle. 2006. A Sojourn in Paris 1824-25: Sex and Sociability in the Manuscript Writing

Friday, June 26, 2026 - 14:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project We finally get to the section of Orr's dissertation that explores in detail Anne Lister's romance with Mrs. Barlow. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #564n Orr 2006 A Sojourn in Paris - Chapter Three Anne’s Sexuality; Anne and Mrs Barlow About LHMP Full citation: Orr, Dannielle. 2006. A Sojourn in Paris 1824-25: Sex and Sociability in th

Thursday, June 25, 2026 - 15:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Listers landlady in Paris sometimes seems almost like a caricatures. She is constantly matchmaking among her tenants, sowing discord and gossip to manipulate them, and possibly participating in her housekeepers side business of arranging for sexual services. Her failure to correctly identify Lister's social interests provided both comedy and conflict. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #564m Orr 2006 A Sojourn in Paris - Mme de…

Wednesday, June 24, 2026 - 16:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project If there's a moment of pure comedy in Anne Lister's diary entries for her Paris stay, it's watching her continued obliviousness to the attempts of her landlady to hook her up with Mr. Franks. "Oh, we just happen to be the two odd people out in every social outing that Madame de Boyve has arranged. Ha ha. What a coincidence!" Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #564l Orr 2006 A Sojourn in Paris - Mr. Franks About LHMP

Tuesday, June 23, 2026 - 17:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Although the most significant romance that our Lister enjoyed during her Paris trip was with Mrs. Barlow, there are several other flirtations of various intensity that are documented in her journal. This section of the dissertation looks at her interactions with Mademoiselle de Sans. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #564k Orr 2006 A Sojourn in Paris - Melle de Sans About LHMP Full citation:

Monday, June 22, 2026 - 09:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project People sometimes ask me how lesbians in the past found each other, and sounded each other out about their desires. In this section, looking at Lister's socializing with the MacKenzie mother and daughter in Paris, we see a teenager's insightful observation of Lister's personality, and how she used her classical education to carefully ask that sort of question. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #564j Orr 2006 A Sojourn in Paris -…

Sunday, June 21, 2026 - 21:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project There's some thing of a rolling process to setting up and posting these blogs. Even as I am in the middle of posting the sections of Orr's dissertation, I'm working ahead to finish writing up the remainder of the blogs for this document. I have one more work session to complete that work and then I can coast for the rest of the month. It looks like I've timed the blogs precisely to finish the current publication on the last day of…

Friday, June 19, 2026 - 19:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project This section of the dissertation continues the structural analysis of Anne Listers papers by examining the interplay between her letters and journal entries. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #564h Orr 2006 A Sojourn in Paris - Anne’s Intertextuality About LHMP Full citation: Orr, Dannielle. 2006. A Sojourn in Paris 1824-25: Sex and Sociability in the Manuscript Writings o

Thursday, June 18, 2026 - 13:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project I've developed a system of notetaking and speech to text transcription that is enabling me to keep up with my post a day for June, but there's one aspect of processing publications for the blog that I am having to delay until later. One of my side projects is creating a database of vocabulary related to lesbianism and sex between women based on primary sources quoted in the publications or on primary sources that I identify…

Wednesday, June 17, 2026 - 17:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project This dissertation does a lot of setting the stage for the analysis, by digging deeply into the physical and structural aspect of Lister's records. It's always tempting to dive directly into the juicy content, but by focusing on the details of the structure, Orr is able to identify subtle shifts in how Lister treats different people and subjects. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #564f Orr 2006 A Sojourn in Paris Chapter One…

Tuesday, June 16, 2026 - 08:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project I must confess that I am a methodology nerd. When I'm reading a historian's work, I love to hear all the details of how they're approaching the material, how they're interpreting it, and how they're presenting it. In my own nonfiction reading, I sometimes feel that this matter overwhelms the meaningful content of what I'm writing about. But I have one adage that I hold to, both in my own research and when teaching others, which…

Monday, June 15, 2026 - 17:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project It's been along day involving a flat tire and I'm tired, so no clever intro today. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #564d Orr 2006 A Sojourn in Paris - Sexuality and Sociality in Anne’s Journals About LHMP Full citation: Orr, Dannielle. 2006. A Sojourn in Paris 1824-25: Sex and Sociability in the Manuscript Writings of Anne Lister (1791-1840).

Sunday, June 14, 2026 - 17:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Today's section of Orr's dissertation looks at the ways in which other researchers have interpreted Lister's life. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #564c Orr 2006 A Sojourn in Paris - Theorizing Anne’s Sexual and Social Identity About LHMP Full citation: Orr, Dannielle. 2006. A Sojourn in Paris 1824-25: Sex and Sociability in the Manuscri

Saturday, June 13, 2026 - 07:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Orr's dissertation aims to approach the Lister documentary material from previously unexplored angles. So the first step is to map out the existing landscape. (To be honest, it sometimes feels like Orr is criticizing previous work for not having studied aspects it didn't set out to study. But I guess a dissertation needs to justify its existence.) Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #564b Orr 2006 A Sojourn in Paris -…

Friday, June 12, 2026 - 14:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project In order to make this dissertation manageable, I will be posting it in smaller segments--portions of the fairly lengthy chapters. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #564a Orr 2006 A Sojourn in Paris Introduction About LHMP Full citation: Orr, Dannielle. 2006. A Sojourn in Paris 1824-25: Sex and Sociability in the Manuscript Writings of Anne Lister (1791-1840). (Doctoral Disser

Thursday, June 11, 2026 - 11:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project When I pulled together the journal articles in my folders on biographical topics for this cluster I also added a couple other publications that I had in electronic form on the topic of Anne Lister. As one of those items is a doctoral dissertation and another is a collection of articles, these materials are likely to see me through pretty much the rest of June. There is, as I sometimes comment humorously, an entire academic…

Wednesday, June 10, 2026 - 15:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project When it comes down to it, the Codrington divorce trial is not a shining example of much of anything. Maybe Helen Codrington and Emily Faithful had a lesbian affair? But the divorce trial was about Helen's heterosexual extra-marital relations. The hint of the threat of a revelation of Emily's sexual orientation comes into play only to prevent her from testifying on Helen's behalf. And it's quite possible that the testimony Helen…

Tuesday, June 9, 2026 - 11:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project There are many angles to be had on the ladies of Llangollen. This article looks specifically at the aesthetics of the rural cottage retreat as an element both for romantic friendship and Romanticism in general. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #561 Reynolds 2010 Cottage Industry About LHMP Full citation: Reynolds, Nicole. 2010. “Cottage Industry: The Ladies of Llangollen and the Symbolic C

Sunday, June 7, 2026 - 09:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Sometimes, what looks like a fascinating article simply turns out to be a view into an academic slap-fight. Still interesting but not particularly relevant. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #560 Bell 1987 Renaissance Sexuality and the Florentine Archives About LHMP Full citation: Bell, Rudolph M. 1987. “Renaissance Sexuality and the Florentine Archives: An Exchange”

Friday, June 5, 2026 - 07:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Although cross-dressing is one of the motifs that I trace within the Project, not all instances of cross-dressing reflect gender identity or sexuality. At least, not in the most overt sense of gender identity. Madame de Saint Balmon took a "masculine" role in protecting her lands during war, in part because she ended up on the opposite side of the war from her husband. This study of two portraits that reflect subtly different…