How can I make a list of lists in R?

Using your example::

list1 <- list()
list1[1] = 1
list1[2] = 2
list2 <- list()
list2[1] = 'a'
list2[2] = 'b'
list_all <- list(list1, list2)

Use '[[' to retrieve an element of a list:

b = list_all[[1]]
 b
[[1]]
[1] 1

[[2]]
[1] 2

class(b)
[1] "list"

You can easily make lists of lists

list1 <- list(a = 2, b = 3)
list2 <- list(c = "a", d = "b")
mylist <- list(list1, list2)

mylist is now a list that contains two lists. To access list1 you can use mylist[[1]]. If you want to be able to something like mylist$list1 then you need to do somethingl like

mylist <- list(list1 = list1, list2 = list2)
# Now you can do the following
mylist$list1

---

Edit: To reply to your edit. Just use double bracket indexing

a <- list_all[[1]]
a[[1]]
#[1] 1
a[[2]]
#[1] 2

If you are trying to keep a list of lists (similar to python's list.append()) then this might work:

a <- list(1,2,3)
b <- list(4,5,6)
c <- append(list(a), list(b))

> c
[[1]]
[[1]][[1]]
[1] 1

[[1]][[2]]
[1] 2

[[1]][[3]]
[1] 3


[[2]]
[[2]][[1]]
[1] 4

[[2]][[2]]
[1] 5

[[2]][[3]]
[1] 6