Sarah Waters (1) (1966–)
Author of Fingersmith
For other authors named Sarah Waters, see the disambiguation page.
About the Author
Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a Ph.D. in English. She is the author of several books including Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, The Night Watch, and The Paying Guests. Fingersmith won the CWA Ellis Peters Dagger Award for Historical Crime Fiction and the South Bank Show Award for show more Literature. She has won a Betty Trask Award and the Somerset Maugham Award. In 2003, she was chosen as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and was named Author of the Year by the British Book Awards, The Booksellers' Association and Waterstone's Booksellers. Several of her novels have been adapted for television. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Photo by Charlie Hopkinson
Works by Sarah Waters
Dancing with Mr. Darcy: Stories Inspired by Jane Austen and Chawton House (2010) — Foreword; Judge — 195 copies
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Waters, Sarah Ann
- Birthdate
- 1966-07-21
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- UK
- Country (for map)
- UK
- Birthplace
- Neyland, Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK
- Places of residence
- Neyland, Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK
Kennington, London, England, UK - Education
- Milford Haven Grammar School
University of Kent (BA|English literature)
Lancaster University (MA|English literature)
University of London, Queen Mary and Westfield College (PhD) - Occupations
- novelist
teacher - Organizations
- Open University
- Awards and honors
- Granta's Best of Young British Novelists (2003)
OBE (2019) - Agent
- Judith Murray (Greene & Heaton)
Members
Discussions
Bowie's Top 100, Fingersmith by Sarah Waters in 75 Books Challenge for 2016 (April 2016)
The Night Watch: 1940s vocabulary in One LibraryThing, One Book (June 2015)
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters in Orange January/July (February 2015)
Reviews
Lists
Overdue Podcast (1)
Romans (1)
First Novels (1)
Female Author (6)
Review 1 (1)
LGBTQIA Horror (1)
Five star books (1)
Reading list (1)
Ghosts (1)
5 Best 5 Years (1)
Secrets Books (1)
Horror Read (1)
Victorian Period (1)
Best War Stories (1)
Unread books (1)
Urban Fiction (1)
To Read (1)
Autumn books (1)
A Novel Cure (2)
2000s decade (2)
Booker Prize (3)
Safe as Houses (1)
Read These Too (1)
Women in War (1)
Allie's Wishlist (1)
World Books (1)
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 8
- Also by
- 15
- Members
- 29,254
- Popularity
- #684
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 1,270
- ISBNs
- 347
- Languages
- 20
- Favorited
- 285
So much for openers. Waters's breakthrough into the mainstream came in 2002 with Fingersmith (more Victorian slang - for a pickpocket, and also a midwife - gravid with sexual innuendo), which was shortlisted for both Orange and Man Booker. Kate Mosse, bestselling author of Labyrinth and Sepulchre, says: "It's contemporary Gothic, something few writers - contemporary or classic - ever pull off." A year later, in another critical coup, she was nominated for Granta's fashionable top 20, the Best of Young British. Other critics have noticed that Waters also takes inspiration from Angela Carter, Philippa Gregory and AS Byatt. Mosse again: "Her research is lightly worn, but utterly trustworthy, and she has an authenticity of historical voice that never falters. She's never showy, yet her writing is rich and inventive, the stuff of treats."
Fidelis Morgan, who writes the Countess Ashby de la Zouche series (The Rival Queens, Fortune's Slave, etc) and also transforms racy historical research into ripping yarns, notes that "Fingersmith is an intoxicating novel with a twist so astonishing it made me gasp aloud. The clever part is that it makes you have to rewind the whole book and reassess each character." Another powerful advocate for Waters's writing, the novelist Philip Hensher says she has made "a great link between the secrecy of queer sexualities and the secrets and revelations of the Gothic tradition. I think she's a big feminine novelist in the large-scale English ensemble tradition of Rosamund Lehmann, Elizabeth Bowen and especially Elizabeth Taylor." http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/10/books-sarah-waters
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