 Scholar Paulina Palmer asserts that Waters , in Tipping the Velvet and her two following novels also set in the Victorian era — Affinity and Fingersmith — is establishing a literary tradition that has not existed : " Women engaging in same @-@ sex relationships in the Victorian era were on the whole invisible and we have little knowledge of their literary interests . " Waters , however , acknowledges that accuracy about lesbian life in the Victorian era is not her primary goal : " My purpose was not to be authentic , but to imagine a history that we can ’ t really recover . " Short bursts of lesbian @-@ themed literary activity occurred in 1920s with authors such as Natalie Clifford Barney and Djuna Barnes . Another surge of activity published as lesbian pulp fiction occurred in the 1950s and early 1960s , during which several notable lesbian authors such as Ann Bannon and Valerie Taylor helped to establish lesbian literary identity . These fictions helped to inform readers about the lives and cultural landmarks of lesbians when very little information existed . Waters states that she is not on a deliberate crusade to write about lesbians , but that it is a reflection of what she knows : " Lesbianism is at the top of the agenda for my books because it 's at the top of the agenda for my life . It would be bizarre not to write about it . " In 2009 , as she reflected on her reasons for writing Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith , Waters said she was searching for her own identity as a lesbian writer . 
