Fingersmith
By Sarah Waters
Riverhead Books, 2002

(From the publisher) Sue Trinder is Fingersmith's protagonist, an orphan who was left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer." Mrs. Sucksby's household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home. When the beloved thief known as "Gentleman" appears on the scene with an irresistable scheme, Sue soon finds herself as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman whom she is to help Gentleman seduce. Once he has married Maud and secured her vast inheritance, Gentlaman will pass her off as mad and commit her to a lunatic asylum, then make off with the money. But secrets and fraud abound in this Dickensian plot, and nothing is as it seems.

Fingersmith is, like Waters' other novels, rich in period detail, depicting the grim slums of 19th-century London, the terrifying depths of a Victorian lunatic aasylum, and the life of the gentry in the English countryside.

About the author

	© Bernd Oll

A writer of ingenuity and power, Sarah Waters has been hailed for her "consummate skill" by the New York Times Books Review, and "gripping, astute fiction" by the Seattle Times.

Waters was born in Pembrokeshire, in southwest Wales. She studied English literatire at the universities of Kent and Lancaster. As a student, she lived for two years in Whitsrtable, the sea-side town—famous for its oysters—in which her first novel, Tipping the Velvet, is partly set. In 1988 she moved to London. In 1991 she returned to postgraduate study, and she spent the next three years writing a PhD thesis on lesbian and gay historical fiction. She had articles on gender, sexuality, and history published in various scholarly journals, including Feminist Review, Journal of the History of Sexuality, and Science as Culture.

While working on her thesis, and becoming increasingly interested in London life of the 19th century, Waters began to concieve the historical novel that would become Tipping the Velvet. With the thesis conmplete, and supporting herself with bits of teaching and part-time library work, she started to write. The novel was finished in just over a year, and was published in the United Kingdom and in the United States. The BBC is in the process of adapting the book into a major series withn director Andrew Davies, who also directed the BBC's adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Waters taught for a time at the Open University, a national educational institution offering undergraduate schooling to mature students from a range of social backgrounds. She has also tutored on creative writing programs. She published articles on literature as recently as 1999, but noiw devotes herself full time to the writing of fiction. She still lives in London, a city she finds endlessly inspiring; but she dreams, too, of returning to a life by the sea.