Sarah Wise BA English

Author of non-fiction books on 19th-century social history

When I graduated, I went into journalism, working in production and becoming chief sub-editor/production editor of Marie Claire, having worked on it since its UK launch. I left to go freelance and wrote a lot of arts journalism, for the Guardian, Independent on Sunday, Observer and other newspapers and magazines.

I applied to Southampton because I really liked the look of the exchange programme with Rutgers University in New Jersey, whereby five English Literature students could spend half of their second year in America. I won a place on the exchange for Jan to June 1985, and it was a great way to explore New York City, without exactly being a tourist.

But the other main valuable aspect of doing English at Southampton - which I hadn't anticipated - was the innovative (for its time) use of literary theory, during the first year. It really gave me a new way (several new ways, in fact) of studying texts. I found that very exciting at the age of 19. I most enjoyed (and got my highest grades) in Modernism, but funnily enough, I don't read much fiction from that movement at all these days.

One other great thing at Southampton was the Theatre Studies module run by Jim Smith. It was all about contemporary and recent plays and he organised trips for us to see performances, and I've recently unearthed the programmes that I kept from that course. We saw some brilliant, innovative, off-the wall productions by companies such as Hull Truck, Monstrous Regiment and Fusion. They made a lot of West End efforts look very stale by comparison.

When I graduated, I went into journalism, working in production and becoming chief sub-editor/production editor of Marie Claire, having worked on it since its UK launch. I left to go freelance and wrote a lot of arts journalism, for the Guardian, Independent on Sunday, Observer and other newspapers and magazines. At the same time, I enrolled on a part-time evening class Master's Degree in Victorian Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. This was a joint honours course, run by the English and History departments. I'd thought when I signed up that I would pretty much do exclusively English Lit course, but the opposite happened -- I took only History modules.

While researching my essays for the MA, I accidentally came across the incidents that became the basis of my first two books: The Italian Boy (2004) and The Blackest Streets (2008). But I'm now in the process of finishing off my third book, to be published in 2012 - and this latest has led me straight back to English Literature, and I am once again thumbing through my old Southampton texts (I kept all my course books after leaving).

The Southampton course was brilliant. It totally shook up my assumptions about studying literature, and challenged the whole notion of 'The Canon'. This approach has become more mainstream now, but it wasn't back then, and I think your late teens/early 20s is a great time to be shown whole new worlds of thought.