Jennifer Sheila Uglow (, (accessed 5 February 2008).
(accessed 19 August 2022). born 1947) is an English biographer, historian, critic and publisher. She was an editorial director of

Chatto & Windus Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Penguin Random House that was formerly an independent book publishing company founded in London in 1855 by John Camden Hotten. Following Hotten's death, the firm would reorganize under the names of his business ...

. She has written critically acclaimed biographies of

Elizabeth Gaskell Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (''née'' Stevenson; 29 September 1810 – 12 November 1865), often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many st ...

, William Hogarth, Thomas Bewick, and

Edward Lear Edward Lear (12 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limerick (poetry), limericks, a form he popularised. ...

, and a history and joint biography of the Lunar Society, among others, and has also compiled ''The Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography''. She won the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 2003 Hessell-Tiltman Prize for ''The Lunar Men: The Friends who Made the Future 1730–1810'', and her works have twice been shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. She is a past president of the

Alliance of Literary Societies The Alliance of Literary Societies, or A. L. S., is an umbrella organisation for literary societies mainly based in the United Kingdom. The Alliance of Literary Societies was founded in 1973, as a result of a campaign to preserve a property assoc ...

and has also chaired the Council of the

Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, th ...

Personal life

Uglow was brought up in Cumbria and later Dorset. She attended Cheltenham Ladies' College (1958–64) and St Anne's College, University of Oxford. After gaining a first in English, she took a BLitt. In 1971, she married Steve Uglow, professor emeritus at the University of Kent; the couple have two sons and two daughters. As of 2015, Uglow lives at Canterbury in Kent.Jenny Uglow website
(accessed 5 February 2008).

Career

Uglow has worked in publishing since leaving university. Until 2013 she was editorial director of the publishing company

, an imprint of Random House. She is an honorary visiting professor at the University of Warwick, vice-president of the Gaskell Society and a trustee of the Wordsworth Trust. She was formerly a member of the British Library's Advisory Group for the Humanities.

Biographies

Uglow compiled an encyclopaedia of biographies of prominent women, first published in 1982; the work is currently in its fourth edition and contains over 2,000 biographies, though later versions have involved other editors. Uglow later wrote: Her first full-length biographies, depicting the Victorian women writers George Eliot (1987) and

(1993), continue her interest in documenting women and reflect her literary background. Gaskell scholar Angus Easson describes ''Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories'' as "the best current biography" of the author, and ''The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell'' refers to it as "authoritative". William Hogarth - Gin Lane

Subsequent works have moved further into the past, with subjects including 18th century author Henry Fielding (1995), and artists William Hogarth (1997) and Thomas Bewick (2006). The scientists and engineers of the Lunar Society, including

Erasmus Darwin Erasmus Robert Darwin (12 December 173118 April 1802) was an English physician. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave-trade abolitionist, inventor, and poet. His poems ...

, Matthew Boulton,

James Watt James Watt (; 30 January 1736 (19 January 1736 OS) – 25 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 Newcomen steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1776, which was fun ...

, Joseph Priestley and Josiah Wedgwood, are the subject of her prize-winning work ''The Lunar Men'' (2003). Uglow's biographies have been particularly praised for their vivid, detailed recreation of the time and place in which their subjects lived. "No one gives us the feel of past life as she does" writes

A. S. Byatt Dame Antonia Susan Duffy ( Drabble; born 24 August 1936), known professionally by her former marriage name as A. S. Byatt ( ), is an English critic, novelist, poet and short story writer. Her books have been widely translated, into more than t ...

of ''Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick'', and a review of ''The Lunar Men'' in '' The Observer'' claims "never has the eighteenth century come so much to life." Reviewing ''Hogarth: A Life and a World'', Peter Ackroyd wrote, "She depicts the city at first hand, almost as if she herself had been wandering through Hogarth's engravings." Frances Spalding considers ''Nature's Engraver'' to be "immeasurably enriched by Uglow's canny grasp of period detail." David Chandler, however, complains that "Uglow tends to amass detail on quotable detail, when sometimes one would like a little more taut synthesis, more interrogation of those details." Bewick Thomas Barn Owl Tyto alba

Uglow's depiction of scientific thought has also been praised; A. S. Byatt, for example, describes ''The Lunar Men'' as "full of ..the real sense that scientific curiosity is as exciting as any 'artistic' pursuit." Her discussion of art has gained a more mixed reception. '' The New York Times'' art critic Michael Kimmelman complains that Uglow overvalues Hogarth's paintings and neglects his artistic associates in favour of his literary ones. On the other hand, Helen Macdonald, reviewing ''Nature's Engraver'', considers that it is "in her descriptions of the physical process of artistic creation, and her musings on individual engravings, that Uglow is at her most energetic and fluid."

Other writing and editing

Uglow's non-biographical writing includes a history of gardening in Britain, written for the bicentenary of the Royal Horticultural Society in 2004, which Uglow describes as a "labour of love". She is also a reviewer for '' The Times Literary Supplement'', '' The Sunday Times'', '' The Guardian'', '' The New York Review of Books'' and '' The Independent on Sunday''.RSA Lectures: Jenny Uglow
(accessed 5 February 2008). Uglow has edited collections of writings by Walter Pater (1973) and Angela Carter (1997), as well as co-editing a set of essays about

Charles Babbage Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Babbage is considered ...

(1997). She has also written introductions to several works by

Radio, television and film

Uglow presented ''The Poet of Albion'', a BBC Radio 4 programme on William Blake, part of a series marking the 250th anniversary of the poet's birth; the programme emphasised Blake's radicalism. She has also twice appeared on the Radio 4 discussion programme, '' In Our Time''. She acted as a historical consultant on several period dramas for the BBC, including '' Wives and Daughters'' (1999), ''

Daniel Deronda ''Daniel Deronda'' is a novel written by Mary Ann Evans under the pen name of George Eliot, first published in eight parts (books) February to September 1876. It was the last novel she completed and the only one set in the Victorian society ...

'' (2002), '' He Knew He Was Right'' (2004), '' North and South'' (2004), '' Bleak House'' (2005) and '' Cranford'' (2007), as well as for the films ''

Pride and Prejudice ''Pride and Prejudice'' is an 1813 novel of manners by Jane Austen. The novel follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the dynamic protagonist of the book who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreci ...

'' (2005) and '' Miss Potter'' (2006).

Awards and honours

''The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future 1730–1810'' won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography (2002), and the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for history of the

International PEN PEN International (known as International PEN until 2010) is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous Internationa ...

(2003). Her biographies ''Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories'' and ''Hogarth: A Life and a World'' were both shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize for biography, and several of her books have reached the shortlist or longlist of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction. According to the charity Booktrust, ''Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick'' was the nonfiction work most often selected as "book of the year" by critics in 2006. ''In These Times'', her study of the home front during the Napoleonic Wars, was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize in 2014. Uglow is a fellow of the

. She is a past chair of its Council, and as of 2017, serves as one of its vice-presidents. She was awarded the society's

Benson Medal The Benson Medal is a medal awarded by the Royal Society of Literature in the UK."The Benson Medal"

in 2012. She has been awarded honorary degrees by the University of Birmingham, University of Kent, Staffordshire University and Birmingham City University. In 2008, she was awarded the

OBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

for services to literature and publishing. In 2010, she succeeded

Aeronwy Thomas Aeronwy Bryn Thomas-Ellis (3 March 1943 – 27 July 2009) was a poet, writer and translator of Italian poetry. She was the second child and only daughter of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and his wife, Caitlin Macnamara. She had two brothers, Lle ...

as president of the

. For ''Mr Lear'', Uglow was awarded with the Hawthornden Prize in 2018.

Works

Biographies and studies

*''George Eliot'', Little, Brown Book Group Limited, 1987,
''Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories''
Faber & Faber, 1993, *''Henry Fielding'' Northcote House Publishers, Limited, 1995, *''Hogarth: A Life and a World'', Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997, *''Dr Johnson, His Club and Other Friends'',

National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery may refer to: *National Portrait Gallery (Australia), in Canberra *National Portrait Gallery (Sweden), in Mariefred *National Portrait Gallery (United States), in Washington, D.C. *National Portrait Gallery, London, with s ...

, 1998, * *''Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography'' (later editions with Maggy Hendry; 4th edn; 2005) *; University of Chicago Press, 2009, *''Words and Pictures: Writers, Artists and a Peculiarly British Tradition'', Faber, 2008; Faber & Faber, 2011, * *; Macmillan, 2013,
''In These Times: Living in Britain Through Napoleon's Wars, 1793–1815''
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015, 978-0-374-28090-1 *''Mr. Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense.'' London: Faber & Faber, Limited, 2017. First U.S. edition: New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018. . *''Sybil & Cyril: Cutting Through Time''. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022. ISBN 9780374272128.

Other nonfiction

*; Random House, 2012, ;

As editor

*''Walter Pater: Essays on Literature and Art'' (1973) *''Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings'' (by Angela Carter) Chatto & Windus, 1997, *''The Vintage Book of Ghosts'' (1997) *''Cultural Babbage: Technology, Time and Invention'' (with Francis Spufford; 1997)

Articles

* *Jenny Uglow, "Stepping Out of Byron's Shadow" (review of Miranda Seymour, ''In Byron's Wake: The Turbulent Lives of Byron's Wife and Daughter: Annabella Milbanke and Ada Lovelace'', Pegasus, 2018, 547 pp.; and Christopher Hollings, Ursula Martin, and

Adrian Rice Adrian is a form of the Latin given name Adrianus or Hadrianus. Its ultimate origin is most likely via the former river Adria from the Venetic and Illyrian word ''adur'', meaning "sea" or "water". The Adria was until the 8th century BC the mai ...

, ''Ada Lovelace: The Making of a Computer Scientist'', Bodleian Library, 2018, 114 pp.), '' The New York Review of Books'', vol. LXV, no. 18 (22 November 2018), pp. 30–32.

References

External links

Jenny Uglow website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Uglow, Jenny 1947 births Alumni of St Anne's College, Oxford English biographers English women writers Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients Living people Officers of the Order of the British Empire Women biographers British women biographers