Waters was drawn to the Victorian era because of the (mis)understandings of what social norms existed during the period. She said to herself at the time, "there's so much more to lesbian history than that". Specifically, Waters intended to write a story that focused on an urban setting, diverging from previous lesbian-themed books such as Isabel Miller's Patience and Sarah, in which two women escape an oppressive home life to live together freely in the woods.
While learning about the activism in socialism, women's suffrage, and utopianism of the period, she was inspired to write a work of fiction of the kind that she would like to read. She recalled, "It was cold, isolated, romantic and so intense-quite special." In 1995, Waters was at Queen Mary and Westfield College writing her PhD dissertation on gay and lesbian historical fiction from 1870 onward when she became interested in the Victorian era. They lived there for two winters in what became a six-year relationship. When Sarah Waters was 19 years old, she joined a student house in Whitstable, Kent, sharing a bed and then falling in love with another young woman. Waters with her fourth novel, The Night Watch, at a book signing in 2002 It was adapted into a somewhat controversial three-part series of the same name produced and broadcast by the BBC in 2002 and a stage play in 2015. The novel was chosen by The New York Times and Library Journal as one of the best books of 1998. The main character's experiences in the theatrical profession and her perpetual motion through the city allow her to make observations on social conditions while exploring the issues of gender, sexism, and class difference. She has acknowledged that the book imagines a lesbian presence and history in Victorian London where none was recorded. As opposed to previous lesbian-themed fiction she had read where the characters escape an oppressive society to live apart from it, Waters chose characters who interact with their surroundings. Employing her love for the variety of people and districts in London, she consciously chose an urban setting. Waters was working on a PhD dissertation in English literature when she decided to write a story she would like to read. The novel has pervasive lesbian themes, concentrating on eroticism and self-discovery. The picaresque plot elements have prompted scholars and reviewers to compare it to similar British urban adventure stories written by Charles Dickens and Daniel Defoe.
Set in England during the 1890s, it tells a coming of age story about a young woman named Nan who falls in love with a male impersonator, follows her to London, and finds various ways to support herself as she journeys through the city. Tipping the Velvet (1998) is a historical novel by Sarah Waters it is her debut novel.
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