Sarah Waters

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Sarah Ann Waters (born 21 July 1966) is a Welsh novelist.

She is best known for her novels set in Victorian society and featuring lesbian protagonists, such as Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith.

Life and education

Sarah Waters was born in Neyland, Pembrokeshire, Wales in 1966. She later moved to Middlesbrough when she was eight years old.

She grew up in a family that included her father Ron, mother Mary, and a "much older" sister. Her mother was a housewife and her father an engineer who worked on oil refineries. She describes her family as "pretty idyllic, very safe and nurturing". Her father, "a fantastically creative person", encouraged her to build and invent.

Waters said, "When I picture myself as a child, I see myself constructing something, out of plasticine or papier-mâché or Meccano; I used to enjoy writing poems and stories, too." She wrote stories and poems that she describes as "dreadful gothic pastiches", but had not planned her career. Despite her obvious enjoyment of writing, she did not feel any special calling or preference for becoming a novelist in her youth.

Waters was a supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, joining as a result of her boyfriend at the time. Politically, she has always identified as a leftist.

After Milford Haven Grammar School, Waters attended university and earned degrees in English literature. She received a BA from the University of Kent, an MA from Lancaster University, and a PhD from Queen Mary, University of London. Her PhD thesis, entitled Wolfskins and togas : lesbian and gay historical fictions, 1870 to the present, served as inspiration and material for future books. As part of her research she read 19th-century pornography, in which she came across the title of her first book, Tipping the Velvet. However, her literary influences are also found in the popular classics of Victorian literature, such as Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins and the Brontës, and in the contemporary novelists that combine a keen interest in Victoriana with a post-modernist approach to fiction, especially A.S. Byatt and John Fowles. Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus had a huge influence on her début novel as well, and Waters praises her for her literary prose, her "common touch", and her commitment to feminism.

Waters came out as lesbian in the late 1980s. She has been in a relationship with copy editor Lucy Vaughan since 2002. As of 2007, she lives in Kennington, south-east London.

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Career

Waters worked as an academic, gained a doctorate, and teaching before beginning to write books. Waters went from her doctoral dissertation to her first book in a hurry. She started writing her thesis and wondered if she'd write a book; she started as soon as the thesis was complete. Her work is very research-intensive, which is a passion she loves. Waters was briefly a member of the long-running London North Writers circle, among other things, Charles Palliser and Neil Blackmore.

All of her books, with the exception of The Little Stranger, have lesbian themes, and she does not object to being labelled a lesbian writer. "I'm writing with a strong lesbian bent in the books," she wrote. It's right there at the center of the books. Despite this "common cause" in teasing out lesbian stories from areas of history that are traditionally considered "highly heterosexual," she still refers to her lesbian protagonists as "incidental" due to her own sexual orientation. "That's how it is in my life, and that's how it is for the majority of lesbian and gay people, isn't it?" It's kind of there in your life.

Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mary Shelley, the Bront's, John Fowles, A. S. Byatt, and Angela Carter are among her writing influences.

Tipping the Velvet, a Victorian picaresque work, was released by Virago Press in 1998. The book took 18 months to write. The book takes its word from Victorian slang for cunnilingus. Waters describes the book as a "very upbeat [kind of a romp]" in it.

It was a 1999 Betty Trask Award winner, and it was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday / John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.

The novel was turned into a three-part television serial based on BBC Two's name in 2002. It has been translated into at least 24 languages, including Chinese, Latvian, Hungarian, Korean, and Slovenian.

Affinity, Waters' second book, was released a year after her first, in 1999. The book, which is also set in the Victorian period, focuses on Victorian Spiritualism's present-day life. Waters had been working on an academic paper on spiritualism while writing her debut book. She combined her passions in spiritualism, jail, and Affinity's Victorian period, which tells the tale of an upper-middle-class woman's friendship with an imprisoned spiritualist.

The book is less light-hearted than the ones that preceded and followed it. Waters find writing it less enjoyable. "It was a gloomy world to have to go into every day," she said.

Affinity was honoured with the Stonewall Book Award and Somerset Maugham Award. At the Castro Theater's opening night of the San Francisco LGBT Film Festival, Andrew Davies adapted Affinity and the resulting feature film premiered on June 19, 2008.

Fingersmith was first published in 2002. It was shortlisted for the Booker Award and the Orange Prize.

In 2005, Fingersmith was turned into a BBC One serial starring Sally Hawkins, Elaine Cassidy, and Imelda Staunton. Waters accepted the change, calling it "a really high quality display" and saying that it was "very faithful to the book." At times, it was spookily faithful to the novel, which was exciting." The novel was later adapted by South Korean director Park Chan-wook into the 2016 film The Handmaiden, which set the story in 1930s-ruled Japan.

Fingersmith was selected by singer and guitarist David Bowie as one of his "top 100 books" by the author.

Waters said,

In 1940s London, the novel tells the tales of a man and three women. Waters describes it as "fundamentally a novel about disappointment and betrayal," as well as "true friendship and real friendship."

During a charity auction in which the opportunity was given to have the winner's name immortalized in The Night Watch, Waters received the highest bid (£1,000). Many well-known British novelists were represented at the auction, as well as author Martina Cole's name, which appeared in Waters' book.

On July 12, 2011, BBC2 and broadcast Night Watch were converted for television.

The Little Stranger, which was also set in the 1940s, differs from Waters' previous books. It's the first time a woman is portrayed in a overtly lesbian film. Waters began to write a book about the social changes in Britain during the postwar period, and researchers note Evelyn Waugh's connection. During the book's construction, it turned into a horror story about a family of gentry whose family has a large country house that they can no longer afford to maintain.

This novel takes place in the 1920s, in the immediate aftermath of World War I's socioeconomic and economic aftermath. Households have been reduced in recent years, and Frances Wray and her mother doher best to keep going. Lilian Barber, the growing lesbian relationship in Frances, provides a tumultuous backdrop for a murder probe that takes place in the latter half of the book. "In her latest book set in 1920s south London, the inimitable Sarah Waters takes a dramatic pivot change with aplomb." "Eerie, virtuoso writing," the Telegraph described it as "eerie, virtuoso writing."

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