Author Guide · Historical Fiction
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In 1995 Sarah Waters finished a PhD at Queen Mary, University of London, on lesbian and gay historical fiction from 1870 to the present. The research drew her to nineteenth-century London, and that year she began her first novel, Tipping the Velvet (1998), about an oyster girl from Whitstable who falls for a male impersonator in the music halls. Five more novels followed, moving from Victorian London to the Blitz and the 1920s suburbs. Three of them were shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and five have been adapted for television or film, among them Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden (2016). This guide covers her six key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 6 key books · 1998–2014 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Sarah Waters has published six novels: Tipping the Velvet (1998), Affinity (1999), Fingersmith (2002), The Night Watch (2006), The Little Stranger (2009) and The Paying Guests (2014). Start with Fingersmith, a Victorian crime novel shortlisted for the Booker Prize; below is what each book is about and which one to read next.
Where to Start with Sarah Waters
If you want her best-known novel
→ Fingersmith (2002) — Victorian thieves, a country house and a double-cross.
If you want where it all began
→ Tipping the Velvet (1998) — the music halls of 1890s London.
If you want a ghost story
→ The Little Stranger (2009) — a crumbling country house after the Second World War.
If you want the Second World War
→ The Night Watch (2006) — London in the 1940s, told backwards.
6 Sarah Waters Books, in Order
Tipping the Velvet
In the 1890s Nan Astley, who works in her family’s oyster restaurant in Whitstable, falls for Kitty Butler, a male impersonator, and follows her to London and onto the music-hall stage. When the affair ends, Nan drifts through the city’s underworld before finding a home with Florence, a socialist in the East End. The novel also won the Lambda Literary Award. Andrew Davies adapted it for BBC Two in 2002, with Rachael Stirling and Keeley Hawes, and Laura Wade’s stage version opened at the Lyric Hammersmith in 2015.
Affinity
London, 1874: Margaret Prior, an unmarried woman of nearly thirty recovering from her father’s death, becomes a Lady Visitor to the women’s wards of Millbank Prison. There she grows fascinated by Selina Dawes, a spiritualist medium jailed after a death at a séance. The novel is told through both women’s diaries. It also won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and was filmed for ITV in 2008 from a screenplay by Andrew Davies.
Fingersmith
London, 1862: Sue Trinder, an orphan raised among thieves in the Borough, is sent as a maid to Maud Lilly, an heiress living with her uncle in a remote country house, to help a con man called Gentleman marry Maud for her money. The plot turns on a double-cross best left unspoiled. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize, adapted by BBC One in 2005, and moved to 1930s Korea in Park Chan-wook’s film The Handmaiden (2016).
The Night Watch
Four Londoners — Kay, an ambulance driver; Helen and Viv, who work at a dating agency; and Viv’s brother Duncan — are followed backwards through the war, from 1947 to 1944 to 1941, so that each section shows how the previous one came about. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize, and won the Lambda Literary Award. BBC Two broadcast an adaptation in 2011, with Anna Maxwell Martin, Claire Foy and Jodie Whittaker.
The Little Stranger
In the late 1940s Dr Faraday, a country doctor in Warwickshire, is called to Hundreds Hall, the decaying Georgian house of the Ayres family. As he becomes close to the family, a series of strange events overtakes the house, and the novel never settles whether they are supernatural. It was her third book shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Lenny Abrahamson’s film, with Domhnall Gleeson and Ruth Wilson, followed in 2018.
The Paying Guests
Camberwell, 1922: Frances Wray and her mother, left in debt by her father’s death and having lost both sons in the war, take in lodgers, Leonard and Lilian Barber. Frances and Lilian begin an affair that leads to a death and a trial. Waters drew on two real cases, the Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters murder trial of 1922 and the Alma Rattenbury case of 1935. It was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.
In What Order to Read Sarah Waters
The six novels are standalones, with no shared characters, so you can read them in any order. Publication order does show a clear arc: the first three are set in Victorian England and borrow the shape of Victorian fiction, while the last three move to the 1920s and 1940s and slow down.
Most readers start with Fingersmith, because it has the strongest plot. If you love it, go back to Tipping the Velvet and Affinity; if you prefer quieter, sadder books, go forward to The Night Watch. Read Fingersmith before you see The Handmaiden, which gives away the same twists.
A reading path
1. Fingersmith (2002)
2. Tipping the Velvet (1998)
3. Affinity (1999)
4. The Little Stranger (2009)
5. The Night Watch (2006)
6. The Paying Guests (2014)
The years · 1966–2019
Quick facts about Sarah Waters
- Known for
- Sarah Waters is known for historical novels about lesbian lives in Victorian and twentieth-century England, above all the Booker-shortlisted Fingersmith.
- 1966
- Born in Neyland, Pembrokeshire
- 1995
- PhD on lesbian and gay historical fiction
- 2002
- Fingersmith
- 2019
- Appointed OBE for services to literature
- Born
- 21 July 1966, Neyland, Pembrokeshire; grew up partly in Middlesbrough
- Education
- BA Kent, MA Lancaster, PhD Queen Mary, University of London (1995)
- Novels
- Six, from 1998 to 2014
- Booker Prize
- Shortlisted three times: 2002, 2006 and 2009
- Honours
- Granta Best of Young British Novelists (2003); FRSL (2009); OBE (2019)
- Lives
- London
The red mark is 2002: Fingersmith, her best-known novel and her first on the Booker shortlist.
How Sarah Waters Writes: Plot, Period and Hidden Lives
Waters came to fiction through scholarship. Her doctoral thesis studied how lesbian and gay writers had imagined the past, and her novels put women who loved women back into periods where the official record left them out: the music hall, the Victorian prison, the wartime ambulance service, the rented rooms of 1920s south London.
The Victorian novels borrow the machinery of nineteenth-century fiction: first-person narrators, long plots, orphans, inheritances, sensational twists. Fingersmith runs its story twice from two narrators, and the second account overturns the first. Affinity is built from two women’s diaries. The later books are told more quietly in the third person, apart from Faraday’s first-person narration in The Little Stranger, and The Night Watch runs its three sections backwards.
She works slowly, with research behind every setting, and her later novels came three to five years apart. In a Booker Prizes interview she said she prefers not to sell a book before it is written, so that she can work at her own speed. No novel has followed The Paying Guests (2014) yet.
Watch
Sarah Waters in Conversation at Homotopia
Lou Muddle talks with Sarah Waters about her novel The Paying Guests, shortlisted for the 2015 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and her earlier novels, in a Homotopia festival event posted in November 2015. From the official homotopiafestival channel.
Frequently asked questions about Sarah Waters’s books
How many books has Sarah Waters written?
Six novels: Tipping the Velvet (1998), Affinity (1999), Fingersmith (2002), The Night Watch (2006), The Little Stranger (2009) and The Paying Guests (2014). All six are covered on this page.
What are Sarah Waters’s books in order?
Tipping the Velvet (1998), Affinity (1999), Fingersmith (2002), The Night Watch (2006), The Little Stranger (2009) and The Paying Guests (2014). They are standalones and can be read in any order.
Where should I start with Sarah Waters?
With Fingersmith (2002), her Victorian crime novel about a young thief sent to deceive an heiress. It has her strongest plot and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. If you prefer a ghost story, start with The Little Stranger.
What is Sarah Waters’s most famous book?
Fingersmith. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize in 2002, won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, and became both a BBC One serial (2005) and Park Chan-wook’s film The Handmaiden (2016). Tipping the Velvet is a close second, partly thanks to the 2002 BBC series.
Which Sarah Waters books have been adapted?
Five of the six: Tipping the Velvet (BBC Two, 2002), Affinity (film for ITV, 2008), Fingersmith (BBC One, 2005, and The Handmaiden, 2016), The Night Watch (BBC Two, 2011) and The Little Stranger (film, 2018). Tipping the Velvet has also been staged, at the Lyric Hammersmith in 2015.
Is The Handmaiden based on Fingersmith?
Yes. Park Chan-wook’s 2016 film moves the plot of Fingersmith from Victorian England to 1930s Korea under Japanese rule, keeping the con, the heiress and the maid at its centre.
Has Sarah Waters won the Booker Prize?
No, but she has been shortlisted three times: for Fingersmith (2002), The Night Watch (2006) and The Little Stranger (2009). Her wins include the Betty Trask Award for Tipping the Velvet, the Somerset Maugham Award for Affinity and the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger for Fingersmith.
Are Sarah Waters’s books a series?
No. Each novel has its own characters and period. The first three are set in Victorian England, The Paying Guests in 1922, and The Night Watch and The Little Stranger in and just after the 1940s.
Is Sarah Waters writing a new book?
She has not announced a seventh novel. The Paying Guests (2014) remains her most recent; Virago reissued the three Victorian novels in new editions in 2024.
Is Sarah Waters still alive?
Yes. She was born on 21 July 1966 in Neyland, Pembrokeshire, lives in London, and still appears at literary festivals.
Footnotes
- Sarah Waters — Wikipedia
- New-look editions of the Victorian novels — sarahwaters.com, 2024
- Sarah Waters Q&A — The Booker Prizes
- The Little Stranger — The Booker Prizes
- Affinity (novel) — Wikipedia
- The Night Watch (Waters novel) — Wikipedia
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster? If you have, you will remember it.”
— Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet (1998), the opening lines
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