Tipping the Velvet
'Piercing the shadows of the naked
stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this was
a girl: the most marvelous girl — I knew it at once! —
that I had ever seen.'
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Set against the tawdry glamour and excitement of the music-halls, Sarah Waters'
debut novel Tipping
the Velvet is a full-bodied evocation of the show business world of
Victorian London. Nan King is an extraordinary heroine. From the oysters of
Whitley Bay, to life as a top male impersonator, from hard times as a prostitute
and even a rent-boy, to her role as an aristocrat's plaything and even a campaigning
socialist, the narrative is sustained by her indomitable spirit and lusty appetites.
Sarah was inspired to write Tipping
the Velvet whilst working on her PhD thesis on lesbian historical fiction
which underlined the inadequacies and potential of the contemporary lesbian
historical genre. Whilst planning the novel, she became increasingly intrigued
by the Victorian music hall, and by male impersonator turns in particular. Her
research led her to investigate music-hall life, the Whitsable oyster trade,
Victorian fashion and daily life as well as Suffragism and early Socialism.
She also read a fair amount of nineteenth-century pornography and dictionaries
of slang and vulgar words: 'tipping the velvet' is Victorian slang for cunnilingus.
Tipping
the Velvet attracted a great deal of praise:
‘Could this be a new genre? The bawdy lesbian picaresque
novel? … It’s gorgeous’ Independent on Sunday
‘From the very first paragraph, the reader is plunged
into the Victorian period with exquisite attention to detail and atmosphere.
I could feel the rough oyster shells, hear the hiss from the gas lamps, smell
the sweat and the greasepaint and taste the excitement … Never a dull
page. Good stuff’ Historical Novel Review
‘A marvellously lush, erotic and bawdy first novel
set in the glory days of seedy music halls’
Woman’s Journal
'This could be the most important debut of its kind
since that of Jeanette Winterson' Daily Telegraph
A TV-tie in edition of Tipping
the Velvet is also available, following the BBC's acclaimed adaptation.
