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Sarah has been a Londoner since the age of 14. She has a BA in English Literature and a Masters degree in Victorian Studies, from Birkbeck College, University of London. Her book The Blackest Streets was published by Bodley Head in June 2008 and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize in May 2009; it was a Book of the Year in the Sunday Telegraph and The Economist and for BBC Radio 4's Saturday Review programme. Her debut, The Italian Boy- Murder and Grave Robbery in 1830s London, was published in 2004 and was shortlisted for the 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction. She lives in central London and is currently working on her third book - about 19th-century asylums.
Sarah Wise has created an exceptional work, in that it is both scholarly and page turning - a genuine treat -- Gilda O'Neill She is a sure-footed guide. In each strand of enquiry she has something new and surprising to say -- Jerry White * Times Literary Supplement * Read it and be flabbergasted * New Statesman * A revelatory book...beaming the light of impartial historical research into the horrible dens and alleys. It avoids the voyeurism that such books often fall into: Wise describes the terrible conditions dispassionately, bringing out the resilience and self-respect of the slum-dwellers -- John Carey * Sunday Times * The Blackest Streets is an excellent and intelligent investigation of the realities of urban living that respond to no design or directive...This is a book about the nature of London itself -- Peter Ackroyd * The Times *
