Sarah Waters

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 (2002). Both novels were adapted into TV mini-series by BBC in 2002 and 2005 respectively. The latter novel was also adapted into the South Korean film The Handmaiden (2016).

Life and education

Early life Sarah Waters was born in Neyland, Pembrokeshire, Wales, in 1966. She later moved to Middlesbrough, England, 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.

I don’t know if I thought about it much, really. I know that, for a long time, I wanted to be an archaeologist – like lots of kids. And I think I knew I was headed for university, even though no one else in my family had been. I really enjoyed learning. I remember my mother telling me that I might one day go to university and write a thesis, and explaining what a thesis was; and it seemed a very exciting prospect. I was clearly a bit of a nerd. Politically, she has always identified as a leftist.

Education 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, Mary Shelley 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; Waters praises Carter for her literary prose, her "common touch", and her commitment to feminism. She has been in a relationship with copy editor Lucy Vaughan since 2002. As of 2007, she lived in Kennington, south-east London. Waters went directly from her doctoral thesis to her first novel. It was during the process of writing her thesis that she thought she would write a novel; she began as soon as the thesis was complete. Waters was briefly a member of the long-running London North Writers circle, whose members have included the novelists Charles Palliser and Neil Blackmore, among others.

With the exception of The Little Stranger, all of her books contain lesbian themes, and she does not mind being labelled a lesbian writer. She said, "I'm writing with a clear lesbian agenda in the novels. It's right there at the heart of the books." Despite this "common agenda in teasing out lesbian stories from parts of history that are regarded as quite heterosexual", she also calls her lesbian protagonists "incidental", due to her own sexual orientation. "That's how it is in my life, and that's how it is, really, for most lesbian and gay people, isn't it? It's sort of just there in your life." The book takes its title from Victorian slang for cunnilingus.

Affinity (1999)

Waters's second book, Affinity, was published a year after her first, in 1999. The novel, also set in the Victorian era, centres on the world of Victorian Spiritualism. While finishing her debut novel, Waters had been working on an academic paper on spiritualism. She combined her interests in spiritualism, prisons, and the Victorian era in Affinity, which tells the story of the relationship between an upper-middle-class woman and an imprisoned spiritualist.

The novel is less light-hearted than the ones that preceded and followed it. Waters found it less enjoyable to write.

Affinity won the Stonewall Book Award and Somerset Maugham Award. Andrew Davies wrote a screenplay adapting Affinity and the resulting feature film premiered 19 June 2008 at the opening night of Frameline the San Francisco LGBT Film Festival at the Castro Theater.

Fingersmith (2002)

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

Fingersmith was made into a serial for BBC One in 2005, starring Sally Hawkins, Elaine Cassidy and Imelda Staunton. Waters approved of the adaptation, calling it "a really good quality show", and said it was "very faithful to the book. It was spookily faithful to the book at times, which was exciting."

The Night Watch (2006)

The Night Watch took four years for Waters to write.

The Night Watch was adapted for television by BBC2 and broadcast on 12 July 2011.

The Little Stranger (2009)

Also set in the 1940s, The Little Stranger also differs from Waters' previous novels. It is her first with no overtly lesbian characters. Initially, Waters set out to write a book about the economic changes brought by socialism in postwar Britain, and reviewers note the connection with Evelyn Waugh. During the novel's construction, it turned into a ghost story, focusing on a family of gentry who own a large country house they can no longer afford to maintain.

The Paying Guests (2014)

This novel is set in the 1920s, in the social and economic aftermath of World War I. Households are in reduced circumstances and Frances Wray and her mother have to take in lodgers to keep going. The developing lesbian relationship between Frances and lodger Lilian Barber provides a complex backdrop for a murder investigation that takes up the latter half of the book. The Observer said: "The inimitable Sarah Waters handles a dramatic key change with aplomb in her new novel set in 1920s south London".

Honours and awards Waters was named as one of Grantas 20 "Best of Young British Writers" in January 2003. The same year, she received the South Bank Award for Literature. She was named Author of the Year at the 2003 British Book Awards. She holds an honorary degree from Lancaster University. She has featured on the Pinc List of leading Welsh LGBT figures.

She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to literature.

Each of her novels has received awards as well.

Tipping the Velvet Betty Trask Award, 1999 Library Journal 's Best Book of the Year, 1999 Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (shortlist), 1999 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, 1999 Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction (shortlist), 2000 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, 2000

Affinity Stonewall Book Award, 2001 Wales Book of the Year (shortlist), 2000 Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction Fiction, 2000 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction (shortlist), 2000 Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (shortlist), 2000 Somerset Maugham Award, 2000 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, 2000 The Best Translated Crime Fiction of the Year in Japan, Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! 2004

Fingersmith Crime Writers' Association Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, 2002 Man Booker Prize (shortlist), 2002 Orange Prize for Fiction (shortlist), 2002 British Book Awards Author of the Year, 2003 The Best Translated Crime Fiction of the Year in Japan, Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! 2005

The Night Watch Man Booker Prize (shortlist), 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction (shortlist), 2006 Lambda Literary Award, 2007

The Little Stranger Man Booker Prize (shortlist), 2009 Nominee for Shirley Jackson Award, 2009

The Paying Guests Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (shortlist) 2015