#and then sibella died after she tried to treat her tuberculosis with dung

[jaggedwolf]

In the years since 1820, 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 Belcombe 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 that Anne Lister sought to heat up from a distance, to forge and shape to her will. In numerous wordy letters, she never told Sibella what she was doing – or with whom – instead trying to initiate a flirt by means of complex rhetorical figures.

Angela Steidele, translated by Katy Derbyshire, Gentleman Jack: A biography of Anne Lister, Regency Landowner, Seducer and Secret Diarist