‘I wish I had written the Italian Boy, but alas, Sarah Wise got there first, and did so in style… This is an impressive debut and a compelling piece of history writing.’
Bernard Cornwell, Mail on Sunday Books of the Year

‘An amazing book, full of astonishing images… Our studio is in Old Street, and each day I walk through the area she is talking about.’
Neil Tennant, Pet Shop Boy, Word magazine

‘A haunting blend of scholarship and period empathy.’
Iain Sinclair, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year

‘Wise handles her sources with delicacy and rigour… She has achieved something of no little importance…[and] can take credit for the least smug and self-congratulatory book ever written on 19th-century slum life.’
Matthew Sweet, Sunday Times

‘Compelling reading… scrupulous scholarship… Has all the melodrama, plot twists and pathos of Victorian fiction… Wise’s debut, written with flair and plentifully illustrated, is history at its most shamefully entertaining.’
Michael Faber, The Guardian

‘A work of great skill and sympathy… Shines a great light upon the lives of the very poor. For any student of the city and its secret life, it is indispensable reading.’
Peter Ackroyd, The Times

‘Few writers have unearthed such juicy raw material or made such telling use of it as Sarah Wise in this impressive debut… It is Wise’s contextualisation of the case that makes this book so satisfying.’
Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times paperback review

‘An amazing book… It out-Dickenses Dickens.’
Dr Maria Misra, Samuel Johnson Prize judge, Fellow of Keble College, Oxford

‘Sensitive, meticulous… told with exceptional skill, humour and sympathy.’
Fiona MacCarthy, The New York Review of Books

‘Excellent… an impressively strong sense of 19th-century poverty seems to ooze from its pages and the details are fascinating. This is not a book to read before turning the lights out.’
Toby Clements, The Daily Telegraph

‘She has brilliantly combined a Newgate Calendar spine-tingler with a scholarly account of the London poor… It is exceptionally well organised, rich in data and hard to put down.’
Edward Pearce, Glasgow Herald

‘The Italian Boy is as packed with interesting facts as an overcrowded graveyard, and rich with sprightly, evocative, historical character sketches… A sound combination of solid fact and imaginative flair.’
Rachel Holmes, BBC History Magazine