For Anne Lister (1791-1840), travelling beyond her home in Halifax was paramount.

For Anne Lister enthusiasts in the twenty-first century, travelling to her home is just as significant. This thesis examines the connections across time and space between Lister and contemporary Lister enthusiasts who are invested in her history and establishes a link regarding their shared queer travel motivations and behaviours.

In Chapter 1, I explain the multimethodology I have constructed to produce this research and its efficacy for this thesis and beyond. Chapter 2 identifies what I argue were Lister’s early attempts to construct queer possibilities for herself when travelling to English spa towns in her young adulthood through both her travel and her travel writing. In Chapter 3, I introduce the concept of queer pilgrimage, presenting a case study of Lister’s pilgrimage practices. In this, I argue that her attempts to experience queer community relate to the facilitation of queer pilgrimage for lesbian and queer Lister enthusiasts in the twenty-first century in Halifax and beyond. Chapter 4 provides the results of thirty semi-structured interviews I conducted with lesbian and queer Lister enthusiasts. Through thematic analysis, I identify what Lister locations are of most importance to them, why they were motivated to travel to these sites and how they described their experiences when there.

This thesis presents an innovative, interdisciplinary methodology which may be applied to historical, literary, and sociological research and yields several key arguments. I propose an expanded vision of queer pilgrimage which recognises that historical and contemporary forms of the practice have more in common than may initially be apparent. Through conducting original research on Anne Lister and engaging with portions of her life which have previously received minimal attention, I also reiterate the relevance of studying queer lives in the past to understand the queer present and vice versa.