Angela Steidele

It's not often I read two biographies of the same person straight off- but Anne Choma's version focussed on one bit of Anne Lister's life ...and ended before she and Miss Walker embarked on their amazing journey to the Caucasus.
This version looks at the whole of Lister's life through her vast and detailed diary collection. From her first love affair with a girl at school, her aspirations to cultivate well-to-do friends to help her rise socially, her ambitions for wealth and status (often show more hampered by limited funds) and her quite fascinating drive, determination and intellect.
I think I gained a much better overall image of Lister from Steidele's work...and the constant quotes from her diary. Compelling though she was, I don't think anyone could regard her in a majorly positive light. Indeed Steidele considers her "a beast of a woman" and she was certainly a female Don Juan:
"Anne had renewed her vows with Mariana three times, seduced Miss Vallance and Nantz Belcombe, slept countless times with Isabella Norcliffe, flirted with Harriet Milne, Lou Belbombe and Francis Pickford, spent a long time living in Paris with Maria Barlow and then a few weeks with Mme de Rosny.During all these entanglements, Sibella Maclean had been an iron in the fire..."
So, quite a cad, as she pusues her conquests for money and sex, stringing them along with lies and omissions.
Was interested to read how the Brontes knew of her (a near neighbor); Steidele considers her an influence on Charlotte's unfeminine 'Shirley' and considers the mad Creole Mrs Rochester in ''Jane Eyre' to have been inspired by Lister's first schoolgirl love- mixed-race Eliza Raine, who ended up in an asylum for the insane.
Lister was certainly an intrepid and fearless traveller, climbing unconquered mountains and crossing the wilds of Russia in 1840 into the unheard of depths of Azerbaijan and Georgia.
I also hadnt realised just how extensive were her diaries,containing an almost obsessive amount of minutiae ("in their egocentric indiscrimination, they foreshadow the banal uniquity of the selfie."). They have not all been transcribed: a proposed attempt was abandoned when it was realised that the 4 million words would take 9 years!
Totally fascinating! show less

I guess I'm boring, unadventurous, and cowardly. In 1840 a British lesbian couple travelled through Russia and down to the Caucasians. A few years ago a German lesbian couple decided to follow as much as possible in their footsteps. Both couples had lots of adventures that are quite interesting to read about, but I haven't the smallest inclination to copy them. Not even if I had the health and wealth to do it. The whole thing sounds awfully uncomfortable to me. Yes, I'm missing the chance to show more see some impressive landscapes and fascinating churches, but I can eat regular meals, take regular warm showers, don't have to cross rivers on log bridges... don't need armed cossacks as bodyguards either. Makes 'boring, unadventurous, and cowardly' sound really good.

On the other hand, it makes for good reading. But what a weird ending!

Note: The German is not easy. It also includes quotations from 19th century authors that are not in modern spelling. show less

Aus meiner Sicht handelt es sich bei Angela Steideles Roman "Aufklärung" fast um ein Sachbuch. Ja, es wird die (kaum belegte) Geschichte der Dorothea Bach erzählt, die hier mit dem Ehepaar Gottsched über die Musik in Kontakt kommt. Und die Gottscheds haben sich nicht nur um die deutsche Sprache, sondern auch im Dienst der Aufklärung verdient gemacht, schließlich gehörte Luise Gottsched zu den "hochgelahrten Frauenzimmern" und war nicht nur die Frau von ihrem Mann. Zeitlich wird ein show more Bogen von der Entstehung des Weihnachtsoratoriums bis weit über Bachs Tod hinaus gespannt - Bach tritt hier als Dorotheas Vater zwar in (gewichtige) Erscheinung, es ist aber dennoch keine Bach-Biographie.

Ich habe für das Lesen so einige Zeit gebraucht, weil die Informationsfülle in diesem Text doch sehr hoch ist und viele Quellenbelege als Fußnote eingefügt wurden. Die fiktionalen Elemente, die aus der heutigen Zeit stammen und in das damalige Leipzig versetzt wurden, waren ganz nett (in der Art von Easter Eggs), ich hätte sie aber nicht gebraucht.

Alles in allem eine Empfehlung für alle, die sich für Frauengeschichte, Bach und die Aufklärung interessieren. show less

I enjoyed reading this, but skipped the sources.