Tipping The Velvet

Author(s): Sarah Waters

Modern & Contemporary Literature | LGBTQI Recommendations

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 marvellous girl - I knew it at once! - that I had ever seen. A saucy, sensuous and multi-layered historical romance, Tipping the Velvet follows the glittering career of Nan King - oyster girl turned music-hall star turned rent boy turned East End 'tom'. Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-hall stars in an all-singing and dancing double act. At the same time, behind closed doors, they admit their attraction to each other and their affair begins. 


Product Information

* Sarah Water's wonderfully lush, sensuous and bawdy debut novel set in the music halls of the late 19th century - reissued with a stunning new jacket

Winner of Betty Trask Awards 1999.

'An unstoppable read, a sexy and picaresque romp through the lesbian and queer demi-monde of the roaring Nineties. Could this be a new genre? The bawdy lesbian picaresque novel?' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY 'This could be the most important debut of its kind since that of Jeanette Winterson' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A delightful novel which sets a new standard for lesbian historical fiction, and should entice new readers to the genre' EMMA DONOGHUE

Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a PhD in English Literature and has published articles on lesbian and gay writing and cultural history. She has worked in bookshops and libraries and has taught for the Open University, though has given up full-time academic work in order to concentrate on writing fiction. She is currently working on her third novel.

General Fields

  • : 9781860495243
  • : Little Brown
  • : Virago
  • : 0.37
  • : April 1999
  • : 198mm X 127mm
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Sarah Waters
  • : Sarah Waters
  • : very good
  • : very good
  • : 823.914
  • : 823.914
  • : English
  • : English
  • : 1
  • : 1
  • : Paperback
  • : Paperback